
"COLONEL" 

JOHN SCOTT § 

OF 
LOJVg ISLAND 




Book 



.U5^S4 



COLONEL 

JOHN SCOTT 

OF LONG ISLAND 
1634 (?)-i696 

BY 

WILBUR C ABBOTT 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 



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NEW HAVEN 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXVIII 






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COLONEL 

JOHN SCOTT 

OF LONG ISLAND 



NOTE 

This essay was prepared originally 
for the Society of Colonial Wars in 
the State of New York and read, 
in part, before the Society on Nov- 
ember 8, 191 7. In its present ex- 
tended form it was printed by the 
Society for its members in August 
1918, as Number 30 of their pub- 
lications. 

Owing to the wider interest of the 
subject a limited number of extra 
copies have been printed for inde- 
pendent sale. 



PREFACE 

If Daniel Defoe had known the subject of this sketch — 
and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he did, 
for he knew many such — and had he written this biog- 
raphy, which he of all men could have done best, it would 
probably have borne some such title, dear to his age and 
pen, as this : 

The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures of John 
Scot, commonly called Colonel Scott; his early Experiences 
in America and the West Indies; his Career at Court; his 
Fortunes and Misfortunes as a Soldier; his Exploits as a 
Spy, Informer and Murderer; his Disgrace and Death; 
with some Notice of his Writings as Royal Geographer; 
and of the Glorious Restoration of his Reputation; to- 
gether zvith Notes on his Fame as an Historian. 

No one would have believed that it was less a work of 
fiction than Captain Jack, or Moll Flanders; every one 
would have recognized it as peculiarly typical of the 
picaresque character in which he and his contemporaries 
delighted. That the tale which follows happens to be 
true — however far it falls short of Defoe's art — detracts in 
no way from its curious interest and adds to its vaku in 
explaining certain sides of late seventeenth century Eng- 
lish and colonial history. Colonel Scott, with all of his 
impossibilities, was not only a very real man and one of 
the most picturesque and far- wandering scoundrels of his 
time, but he was an admirable representative of a not 
inconsiderable class of men who contributed something of 
importance and a great deal of color to the affairs of his 
generation. 

For the material contained in the following pages I am 
indebted to the sources quoted in the notes to be found at 



the end of the essay. I am under particular obligations to 
Mr. James Truslow Adams, the historian of Southampton, 
Long Island, who furnished me with many details from 
the records of that town. I am further indebted to him and 
to Professor J. Franklin Jameson for reading the essay 
in manuscript; and :above all to the authorities of the 
Society of Colonial Wars of the State of New York, 
whose unfailing kindness has given this little study its 
present form. I can only hope that those into whose hands 
it may fall may obtain from it some of the entertainment 
and enlightenment which it has afforded me in preparing 
^t- W. C. A. 

Hanover, August, 19 18. 



COLONEL 
JOHN SCOTT 

OF 
LONG ISLAND 

1634(?)-1696 

To be a rascal is bad; to be a great rascal is doubtless 
worse; but to be embalmed in biographical dictionaries for 
pure rascality unadorned with the gilding of politics, of 
high finance, of rom.ance, a rascality not even made re- 
spectable by success — of all failures in the conflict between 
man and oblivion this is perhaps the worst. To match 
one's wit against the world; to gain place and competence; 
to share in affairs which might almost be reckoned great; 
and, on the very threshold of achievement which would 
have drowned the memory of misdeeds and perpetuate 
one's name as soldier, savant, adventurer, empire-builder 
or what not, to find the way barred by duller and more 
honest men, or by more accomplished scoundrels — this is a 
hard case. And it is not lightened by the sight of luckier 
or more eminent associates going on to wealth and power 
and a certain measure of immortality while one is himself 
thrust back into the old nothingness again. Is not this 
the crowning tragedy of rascality? Such is the tragedy of 
John Scott, sometime colonist and soldier, sometime royal 
geographer and the agent if not the confidant of the great; 
always adventurer, and, save for circumstances beyond his 
wit and skill, and, we may add, perhaps beyond his charac- 
ter, lord of Long Island, and the founder of a fourteenth 
original colony in North America; now but the shadow of 
a shade of a dead rascal, whose life serves to while away 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

an hour or two, perhaps at best to point a moral and adorn 
a tale. 

If this were all, it would, perhaps, not be enough to 
justify any of that long and wearying research which, in 
such a case as his, resembles nothing so much as historical 
detective work. But it is not. The story of Scott did not 
end with his departure from the scene of his earthly activi- 
ties. However numerous those activities while he was alive, 
they pale to insignificance before his achievements once he 
was in his grave; and it is in these no less, perhaps even 
more, than in the extraordinary circumstances of his life, 
that there lies whatever of value such a study as this con- 
tains of contribution to ultimate truth. 

That contribution is, on its face, not great. It may, in 
a sense, seem trivial; for it is, after all, only a story, and in 
many ways not even a pleasant story. It is a story without 
a hero, unless you may call its subject, who was a villain, 
by the more agreeable title. It is equally devoid of a 
moral; indeed its principal character is peculiarly notable 
for a conspicuous lack of morals. Finally, to complete the 
depressing catalogue of its unpleasant characteristics and 
so get them out of the way once for all, it has no particular 
bearing on the great problems which present themselves to 
us so urgently day by day, — unless it be that of the most 
fundamental of all problems, human nature itself. And, 
it is only fair to say, a good many persons have at one time 
or another, in various fashions and from the most diverse 
motives, told parts of it. No one hitherto has related it in 
its entirety, and that is, perhaps, after all, the principal 
value of this tale; for it happens to be one of those not 
uncommon things in the world whose whole is greater than 
the sum of its parts. 

Thus having in so far as possible dispelled any agreeable 
if mistaken anticipations with which any one may have 



OF LONG ISLAND 



provided himself as an antidote for spending time in read- 
ing mere history; and having offered such reassurance as 
is possible that the story contains little which will either 
instruct or elevate the mind; it may be proper to add, by 
way of introduction, that this is a study of what is, so to 
speak, a cross-section not only of English and colonial, but 
of general seventeenth century history, seen chiefly, as it 
were, from the under side. 

The story begins, as it should, at the beginning, for two 
reasons. The first is because its earliest scenes are laid in 
that region and in that period which long conditioned the 
fortunes and misfortunes of its principal character — Long 
Island in the middle of the seventeenth century. The 
second is because the beginning of the tale is in a sense the 
type of the whole. For it begins in a Long Island jail. h <= 

Some time in March of the year of our Lord 1654 there 
came to the attention of the authorities of New Amsterdam, 
then presided over by the redoubtable director general, 
Peter Stuyvesant, news of the activities of a certain young 
Englishman, known even then, it would appear, by the style 
or title of John Scott of Long Island. The Dutch it seems 
had for some time been annoyed by nocturnal raids on their 
property, and Scott's presence in the district from which 
he took his appellation, his character, his activities, a sus- 
picion that he was concerned in these matters, or something 
about him, commended him so little to the Dutch colonists 
in that land then debatable between. New England and 
New Netherland, that he was seized and clapped in jail 
as an undesirable citizen, together with four or five of 
his neighbors, including a certain Mr. Baxter who was to 
be associated with him in later years and under far differ- 
ent circumstances. Under such conditions John Scott made 
his somewhat inauspicious entry into history. 

Who he was, no one then or thereafter seems rightly to 

3 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

have known; and though during a long and busy life he 
took great pains at many times to explain to a considerable 
number of people his precise origin and ancestry, the matter 
was not thereby much illuminated, partly for the reason 
that it did not always happen that any two of his explana- 
tions quite agreed with each other, and more largely for 
the still better reason that none of them agreed with the 
facts which other persons adduced from their knowledge of 
him. For the moment we may ignore his own story there- 
fore, and confine ourselves to what his acquaintances and 
the official records declared of him from their own knowl- 
edge. 

From these it would appear that, about six years before 
his appearance in Long Island, Scott had been sentenced 
by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay to serve his 
master after his term of service 35 shillings worth, "or 
otherwise satisfy him." That master was one Lawrence 
Southwick, a Quaker, later banished from Massachusetts 
for his religion, and in the person of his wife, Cassandra, 
commemorated to posterity in one of Whittier's poems. 
How Scott came into Southwick's hands does not clearly 
appear; but there is evidence that, with other youths, he 
had been carried to Massachusetts as a bound-boy in the 
care of a certain Edmund Downing, about the year 1643. 
This story of his origin is partly confirmed, partly modified, 
by the fact that some years after he became a noteworthy 
figure in the colonies, a certain Captain Richard Nicolls, 
then secretary to the first English governor of New York, 
his kinsman. Colonel Richard Nicolls, testified that Scott 
"was born at Ashford, Kent, of very meane parentage, was 
bro't by his mother to New England, who lived miserable 
poore in this gov't, a poor bankrupt miller's wife till very 
lately next to want and beggary," 

The testimony is not identical but, despite the assertion 



OF LONG ISLAND 

of the compiler of the American Scott genealogy that the 
young adventurer was "connected" with the Scotts of 
Scott's (or Scot's) Hall, in Kent, it is probable that this re- 
lationship was as shadowy as many of his other claims to 
lands and titles. The English family in later years denied 
with great bitterness his claim of relationship and his right 
to bear the arms of the family. And it is perhaps not 
without significance, in this connection, that, when he be- 
came established in his new home, he named his place in 
Long Island, not Mornamont, after the Kentish Scott 
family estate, but Ashford, which somehow seems to echo 
the English town with which he was most familiar before 
his emigration. 

But if he lacked lineage and arms, he did possess some- 
thing perhaps almost if not quite as useful. For some time 
after his arrival on Long Island he seems to have lived a 
good deal among the Indians and traded on his own ac- 
count. And, "having a nimble genius, tho' otherwise 
illiterate, with the help of a little reading, having a good 
memory and greater confidence, he became somewhat above 
the common people," indulging in somewhat various and 
devious activities whose immediate end we have seen in 
what may be called, in the language of Dr. Watson and 
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Long Island 
Jail." 

It is scarcely surprising that the Dutch showed such little 
appreciation of Scott's peculiar talents at such a time and 
under such circumstances as those which he selected to 
make his entry into politics. However that era was adapted 
to his gifts, it was not one which commended restless and 
intriguing Englishmen like him to the inhabitants of the 
New Netherlands. It was a trying period for Hollanders 
everywhere, but most especially to those on Long Island. 
England had just transformed her Commonwealth into a 

5 



9 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Protectorate, with Oliver Cromwell at its head. She was, 
moreover, just emerging from a war with Holland, in 
which she had been successful enough to break the hold 
of the Dutch carrying monopoly which they had enjoyed 
for nearly a generation. She was on her way to war with 
Spain; and, with the triumphs of her great admirals over 
the old masters of the sea, it seemed not improbable that 
she would presently come to dominate the element on which 
Holland depended for its living, almost for its life. 

And if the situation was bad for the Dutch in Europe, 
it was worse for the Dutch in America. A generation 
earlier their traders had begun to plant their posts along 
the Hudson at the same moment that the English had 
begun to settle on Massachusetts Bay. From those two 
points each side had made its way along the coast and into 
the interior. Moreover the Swedes had begun a settlement 
on the Delaware, and New Netherland found itself, in con- 
sequence, hemmed in by New England on the one side and 
New Sweden on the other. The latter was easily disposed 
of; and in the very days that Scott found his way to_. jail, ''^'' 
the Dutch conquered and absorbed the Swedish settlements. 
But the English were tougher antagonists. In the thirty- 
five years since the foundation of Plymouth, they had 
spread northward to the Kennebec and south and west to 
Rhode Island and Connecticut. They had settled at Say- 
brook and so secured the mouth of the Connecticut River; 
they had built a town at Hartford, and planted a colony 
at New Haven. They had spread into Long Island and 
were now in fairly secure possession of the Connecticut 
valley which had been disputed between them and the 
Dutch, together with the eastern end of the island opposite. 
Thence they had pushed westward until, at the very door 
of Manhattan, their pioneers had begun to colonize the 
Westchester district. 



r->J2,'%Vv./«-^^ 



OF LONG ISLAND 

With the rise of England and the decline of Holland on 
the sea, it was thus becoming evident that, short of some 
miraculous reversal of fortune, the days of the ascendancy 
of New Netherland were numbered. Under such circum- 
stances English agitators were naturally peculiarly dis- 
tasteful to the Dutch, and especially to such men as the 
director-general^ Stuyyesant. Scott was carried to New 
Amsterdam, there examined, and ultimately released, doubt- 
less with stern admonitions to go, and sin no more. 

He seems to have passed the next few years in the pur- 
suit of a more or less honest livelihood. It would appear 
from some later statements that he divided his time between 
the exercise of his profession as a blacksmith and the 
raising of cattle, or, as it was less elegantly expressed by - i i \l 
his contemporaries, "keeping cowes." But these pursuits by ^^^ v '^r ^ 

no means exhausted his energies. He had already turned 
his attention to the chief source of wealth in a new 
country — land ; and even before his entry into international 
affairs, he had found opportunity to exercise his gifts in 
that direction. For that, the time and place were peculiarly 
favorable. When he had been released from his obliga- 
tions to Massachusetts justice he seems to have made his 
way to Connecticut, thence to the oldest settlement on Long 
Island, — the oldest English settlement, indeed, within the 
present boundaries of New York, the town of Southampton, 
which thenceforth for some years became the center of his 
activities. 

He chose well. As towns went in those days Southamp- 
ton was already well established. It had been founded 
about 1639 or 1640 by emigrants chiefly from Lynn, under 
the lead of Edward Howell, Edward Cooper, and the 
minister, Abraham Pierson, the father of the first presi- 
dent of Yale College. This party of some forty families 
had, according to the custom of the time, formed a com- 

7 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

pany, and secured a concession from one Farrett, the agent 
of that Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, to whom 
James I had granted and Charles I confirmed rights over 
nearly all the best portions of northern North America, 
but whose chief source of revenue had thus far been the 
sale of Nova Scotian baronetcies and the rights of colon- 
izing Long Island. For this land there were already two 
claimants besides — the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the 
settlers of the recently planted colonies of Connecticut and 
especially New Haven opposite; and these, as well as the 
new colonists from Lynn, were to play no small part in the 
fortunes of Scott. 

Those colonists almost at once came into collision with 
the Dutch, and, driven from their first landing-place at 
Schout's Bay by a force from New Amsterdam, they had 
sought out the Earl's agents at New Haven and from them 
secured a deed by which, in consideration of £400, they 
were permitted to make terms with the Indians for the 
eastern end of Long Island, where by June 1640 they seem 
to have established themselves. The colony had flourished 
from the beginning. Not only was the climate peculiarly 
agreeable; the tillable land, once it was cleared, sufficiently 
fertile; but the sea was full of whales, "crampasses," and 
seals, from which oil could be extracted, and teeming with 
fish and oysters. By the time of Scott's arrival the settle- 
ment was already outgrowing its boundaries; and a year 
before his arrest he had signalized his advent into the real- 
estate field by selling to its directors the adjoining district 
of Quogue, which he had bought from one Ogden, who had 
acquired it from the Indians. 

The passion for land speculation never left him; and his 
stay in Southampton was filled with his activities in that 
field. The records of the settlement in the years between 
1660 and 1664 are filled with accounts of his land transfers. 

8 



OF LONG ISLAND 

For the tracts which he conveyed, he claimed to have — and 
possibly did have — deeds from the Indian sachem Wayan- 
danck and his son Weacham; but the real titles seem to 
have resided principally in his own too exuberant imagina- 
tion, and that of the savage chieftains. They long re- 
mained to vex the colony ; and, however sacred the ceremony 
of transfer "by turf and twig" which gave them into his 
hands, there is at least one instance which sheds some light 
upon his character and activities. For in 1664 when the 
people of Seetauket purchased land of the "Sachem of 
Uncachage, Tobacus," they insisted on that noble savage 
adding to the instrument these words : "Further saith that 
he sold no land to John Scott." 

Besides his canny forehandedness he seems to have 
shown other traits. A month after his arrest he was de- 
fendant in a suit for defamation in New Haven. Three 
years later he was made a freeman of Southampton, was 
granted a house-lot there, was appointed one of the tax 
commissioners ; was suing and being sued by his neighbors, 
chiefly about land; married Deborah, daughter of one 
Joseph Raynor of that place; acted as attorney — among 
other things for a "whale company"; and still later to 
determine the town boundaries. But through it all ran the 
motif of land, and the continual suspicion that his titles 
and transfers were more or less questionable. In short he 
appears to have been one of the first — in view of later 
happenings one hesitates to say the worst — of that long 
line of plausible individuals who have seen in Long Island 
real-estate the true El Dorado so long and so vainly sought 
by Spanish explorers in South America. Meanwhile, too, 
he rose in the world. For whereas he was not long since 
described as "John Scott, Smith," he now appears as 
"Captain John Scott." 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Thus ended the first period of his long and active career. 
Whether he was moved by the suggestions of those whom 
he involved in his real-estate transactions, or whether he 
sought a wider field for his rapidly developing talents, 
about the end of the year 1660 he set sail for England. 
To that next scene of his activities he seems to have cammed 
three things, each of some significance in its way. The 
/. first and most important was himself, his abilities and his 

ambitions; the second was a collection of curiosities, not 

.j^ ^ 7^ - — 

otherwise identified; the third was a copy of a book printed 
two years before in Cambridge, Abraham Pierson's volume 
entitled ''Some Helps for the Indians, Shewing them how 
to improve their Natural Reason to knozv the true God and 
the Christian Religion." 

This last seems, on the whole, a peculiar piece of prop- 
erty for him to cherish, nor one calculated to advance the 
fortunes of a Long Island real-estate dealer at the court 
of his gracious Majesty King Charles the Second, of some- 
what less than blessed memory. Just how the book 
in question may have helped the Indians one extract 
may reveal. "How," says this admirable work, "do you 
prove that there is but one true God?" "Because," it 
answers itself, "singular things of the same kind when 
they are multiplied are differenced among themselves by 
their peculiar properties ; but there cannot be found another 
God differentiated from this by any such like properties." 
This, and much more to the same purpose, was set forth 
in the no doubt pleasing but comparatively rudimentary 
vocabulary of the Quiripi dialect, in which it seems, if 
possible, less comprehensible than in its original tongue. It 
may be hoped that it was more so ; but it was never trans- 
lated, as was originally planned, into Narragansett, and the 
natives of Rhode Island were, in consequence, deprived of 
the privilege of possessing a volume which would doubtless 

20 



OF LONG ISLAND 

have been of incalculable intellectual as well as spiritual 
importance to their development. 

But however little it may have helped the Indians, it 
may seem still more surprising that Scott imagined that 
this pearl of missionary literature could have helped him. 
The explanation is simple enough, though it might not 
occur at once to the ordinary mind. But Scott's was no 
ordinary mind. The book bore on its original title-page 
a statement that it had been "examined and approved 
by Thomas Stanton, Interpreter General to the United 
Colonies." The copy which Scott exhibited with just pride 
to his new English acquaintances was precisely like the 
original with one slight exception. Its title-page announced 
to the reader that the volume had been "examined and 
approved by that Experienced Gentleman (in the Indian 
Language) Captain John Scot." And it has been perhaps 
not unnaturally supposed by the learned antiquarians, who 
nearly two hundred years later interested themselves in this 
earliest product of Scott's literary skill, that the ingenious 
gentleman had found an obliging printer in London who 
was good enough to print the title-page thus simply but 
effectively altered to suit the new circumstances and com- 
pany in which the book found itself — and so further the 
natural ambition of a rising young man by commending 
him to his new friends as a useful agent of his native land 
in its North American possessions, perhaps in some lucra- 
tive official capacity. 

If there were any doubt that Scott had a genius for the 
exercise of certain arts by which men rise in the world it 
would be at once dissipated by the mere fact that he came 
to England when he did. The situation might have been 
made to his hand. The king had just been restored. The 
court was full of needy adventurers and still needier 
royalists, of whom King Charles himself was chief. The 

11 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

country was, for the moment, in a ferment of loyalty; and 
what was more to the purpose, the unsettled situation of 
affairs left over from the civil wars and the interregnum, 
the difficulty of distinguishing true claims from false, and 
more especially honest men from rogues, offered an un- 
paralleled opportunity to men not over-scrupulous to ad- 
vance their fortunes. This Scott could scarcely have 
known in its entirety when he made his exit from Long 
Island, but that he grasped its significance so quickly and 
so immediately set himself to take advantage of the bless- 
ing fortune had put in his way argues again the adaptable 
and resourceful qualities which the man possessed, to an 
even greater degree than his happy inspiration in regard to 
the title-page of the missionary volume. It argues still 
more, for it reveals that imaginative quality which was so 
eminent a feature of his intellectual equipment. 

Moreover, there is one other circumstance/ to be taken 
into account in connection with Scott's advent in England 
in the year of the Restoration. Whatever the importance 
of the reign of Charles II in other fields, in that of colonial 
development it was one of the principal epochs in English 
history. In the preceding forty years there had been estab- 
lished in North America a series of settlements which ex- 
tended from Virginia and Maryland on the south through 
New Sweden, New Netherland, New Haven, Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Hampshire, 
and the Kennebec region to New France along the lower 
St. Lawrence. The greater part of these colonies were 
English, and the troubles of the reign of Charles I had 
poured into them a population which made them the largest 
European society outside of Europe. The various colonies 
had found their legal status a matter of considerable con- 
cern in the face of the civil disturbances in England; and 
when the Restoration of Charles seemed to promise settled 

12 



OF LONG ISLAND 

government, they hastened to have their various privileges 

confirmed or enlarged by royal charter. In consequence 

every colony deputed representatives to protect its interests, 

and among the strange faces with which London was filled 

in the early days of the new reign, those of the colonial 

agents were conspicuous. From Boston came Samuel .^ko. ^Mj^^erii-y 

Maysrick to represent the interests of Massachusetts ; from 

Rhode Island came George Baxter to second the efforts of 

Clarke and urge the cause of the English in territories 

claimed by the Dutch; from Virginia came Governor 

Berkeley; from Connecticut came Governor John Winthrop 

— and from Long Island came Captain John Scott. 

In addition to this there was another element involved. 
The royalists had come back for the most part stripped of 
their old inheritance by the catastrophe which had over- 
taken their party in the preceding twenty years. The 
number of places and pensions which England itself 
afforded fell far short of the number of those who pressed 
their claims on the new administration. The needy royal- 
ists were not long in perceiving that the rapid development 
of the colonies, and the possibility of forming new colonies, 
offered opportunities for increase in their fortunes. In 
consequence, amid the manifold activities which the court 
and council of Charles II revealed in these early years, 
colonial projects were conspicuous. From the Lord Chan- 
cellor, Clarendon, down, the courtiers bestirred themselves 
in colonial, and presently commercial projects, as their pre- 
decessors of Elizabethan times had busied themselves with 
privateering schemes to spoil the Spaniard. 

These were supplemented by the issue of new grants and 
charters which, in effect, reorganized the British colonial 
empire. A year before Charles II returned to England the 
Virginians had proclaimed him King of England, Scotland, 
Ireland and Virginia, and restored the royal governor. Sir 

23 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

William Berkeley, who made his way to England on the 
Restoration to plead in vain for the amelioration of the 
Navigation Act and a guarantee for her constitution. And 
scarcely had the Restoration been accomplished when Lord 
Culpepper, one of the members of the Plantations Com- 
mittee, began those plans to acquire a hold over the loyal 
colony which bore fruition a dozen years later in a grant 
to him and to Arlington of its rights for a generation, 
and perhaps contributed to the so-called Bacon's Rebellion. 
Among the earliest acts of the new government had been 
the appointment of Clarendon and seven others to act as 
a council for the colonies, and through that body came a 
reorganization of the plantations in America. In 1662 
the charter of Connecticut was granted by the king at the 
solicitation of the Connecticut agent, John Winthrop, who 
for fourteen years thereafter was annually chosen its 
governor. By that charter, much against its will, New 
Haven was annexed to Connecticut, whose boundaries were 
extended from the Narragansett river to the Pacific Ocean. 
At the same time the government of Maryland was con- 
firmed to Lord Baltimore, and in the following year Baxter 
brought to Rhode Island the charter which had been 
obtained through the exertions of Clarke. At the same 
time, too, the lands south of Virginia were erected into the 
province of Carolina and granted to Clarendon and his 
associate, Berkeley. Finally, to make the story complete, 
when, a few years later, England seized New Netherland, 
the king granted to his brother, the Duke of York, the lands 
between the Connecticut and the Delaware; and James in 
turn gave to his followers, Berkeley and Carteret, the land 
between the Hudson and the Delaware. Thus, within 
five years after the Restoration, all the colonies of North 
America, save Massachusetts, had been given new charters 
or new masters. And it is perhaps no wonder that Scott, 

]4 



OF LONG ISLAND 

surrounded by this atmosphere, conceived that he too might 
profit by the general distribution of lands and offices. He 
thereupon bestirred himself to share in this windfall. 

The methods which he adopted were characteristic of the 
man and the situation in which he found himself. Under 
the circumstances it seemed fairly apparent to many men 
of his kind and of even meaner intelligence that whether 
or not Charles II was the fountain of honor and justice, 
he was certainly the fountain of pensions and patronage. 
In common, therefore, with a horde of other adventurers, 
Scott cast about for the best way to approach this potential 
source of benefits. After the manner of his kind, he took 
what seemed the most direct path to the royal presence — 
by way of the back stairs. He made friends with one 
Thomas Chiffinch, custodian of the royal jewels, "keeper 
of rarities," page of the closet, and, above all, brother of 
that William Chififinch of unsavory memory, who was /-Vy^f tt^tj ^t-ei^'^ 
the chief panderer to the royal pleasures. He scraped ) i/Ktr>^^-„. 
acquaintance with a certain Joseph Williamson, then secre- 
tary to that Henry Bennet who was even then on his way 
to place and fortune and the title of Earl of Arlington. 
Under such auspices Scott went to court, met Bennet him- 
self, and gained interest with a "potent gentleman," by 
presenting him with a parcel of curiosities valued at £60. 
And whither his ambitions tended may be judged by the 
fact that in May, 1661, it was reported through Long 
Island that the king had bestowed upon him that entire 
region. 

The report was not true, but it was not Scott's fault 
that it was false. There was some ground for the rumor. 
He had, indeed, petitioned for such a grant; and it even 
seemed for a time that he might achieve his purpose. But 
among the many characteristics which make Scott's career 
so interesting, one is conspicuous. It is what he and men 

15 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

like him usually call ill-luck. For while his petition was 
still pending in this winter of 1661-2, there arrived in 
London no less a person than John Winthrop the younger, 
chief magistrate of Connecticut, seeking a new charter for 
his colony. As events were to prove there were few men 
in the world whose advent at this moment Scott ought 
to have feared more than that of Winthrop. Connecticut 
was not only anxious to have its charter rights secured; 
the colony, or some of its members, were exceedingly 
anxious to obtain title to Long Island, or at least that 
precise part from which Scott came. And not only were 
Winthrop's ambitions certain to clash with those of Scott, 
but it is not improbable that Winthrop knew of Scott's 
past. As between the governor of a commonwealth and 
a needy adventurer, there could be small doubt which way 
the authorities would incline. But Scott made the best of 
it. He promptly sought out and endeavored to attach him- ^y^ 
self to Winthrop, though at first, naturally, with small 
success. Despite this, Scott's petition was denied in the 
following spring for reasons which may well be imagined 
and which presently appeared. 

This was, of course, a blow. But your true adventurer 
is not a man to be daunted by a single reverse, nor is he 
accustomed to carry all his eggs in one basket. While Scott 
had been playing his part before court and council, he had 
been notably busy in other and less public capacities. The 
story may be briefly told. Somewhere in those busy days 
of 1 66 1, he met in London a certain Daniel Gotherson, -^^^ 
Quaker, sometime an officer in the Cromwellian army,^ "^"^ 
more recently a tradesman in London, and a spy for the 
government among his old associates, some of whom 
were more than suspected of treasonable practices. More- 
over, by some curious and unfortunate chance for him, this 
worthy gentleman was possessed of some lands on Long 

16 



c^ 



t^ 



OF LONG ISLAND 

Island which he had acquired many years before. His 
wife was a lady of some reputation as an exhorter among 
the sect to which she and her husband belonged. Her 
maiden name was Dorothea Scott, of Scott's Hall in Kent. 
Upon the ground of similarity of name Captain Scott — 
with that ready wit and that openness to opportunity in 
whatever form it presented itself to him — promptly claimed 
relationship with Mrs. Gotherson; and had that claim 
admitted, chiefly, it would appear, on the ground of his 
real or fancied resemblance to certain family portraits pre- 
served in Scott's Hall. It is, moreover, not improbable 
that here, as at a later period, he was aided in his in- 
gratiating design by his early Quaker connection with 
Southwick, from whom, and from Mrs. Gotherson, he 
derived a certain fluency in the peculiar dialect affected by 
that sect which was of much use to him both then and 
thereafter. 

At all events the new acquaintance, cemented by a 
common interest in Long Island real-estate, which has 
always been famous for bringing together the most diverse 
characters by its peculiar charm, prospered so rapidly and 
so completely that from these slender premises Scott pres- 
ently drew a great and characteristic conclusion. By the 
middle of 1662 he had devised one of the most remarkable 
instruments of a career peculiarly notable for remarkable 
documents. It runs as follows : "I, John Scott, of Ashford, 
on Long Island, in the south part of New England, Esquire, 
doe authorize Daniell Gotherson, Esquire, of Egerton in 
Kent, my true and lawfull attorney for me, and in my 
name and for my use to treat for 20,000 acres of land 
lying and being on the South side of Long Island, and 
between Acombamook and ye land of the aforesaid Daniell 
Gotherson, lying by Uncochuag on the south side of ye 
marsh land of the said John Scott, on which it butts South, 

17 



'h-t-^i-^'-^ 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

and thereupon to conclude for such sum or summes of 
money as he in his prudence shall thinke a fitt consideration 
for ye whole or any part of ye said 20,000 acres so soulled, 
I hereby promise to ratify and confirme under my hand 
and seale, if ther be any deficiency in ye grants granted 
by ye said Daniell Gotherson, and to ye performance of 
premises I bind myselfe, heirs, Executors, and assigns" &c. 
To this Scott added an agreement to protect Gotherson's 
property against the sachems Wackcombwin and Wyan- 
danchchase, together with certain other documents of like 
import and equal value. These he sealed with his newly- 
^ acquired signet bearing his coat of arms — which seems to 
-ir>-.hjc(rvi have been the property of Mrs. Gotherson! It is not easy 
.^^iJUc-:i 7 to comprehend how the human mind works, especially in 
l-^r/L^ the presence of a superior intelligence; but it is certainly a 
tribute to Scott's undoubted charm that the Gothersons 
were under the impression they were purchasing land from 
Scott; and that when some three years later Daniel Gother- 
son died, he bequeathed these mythical Long Island estates 
to his surviving heirs. It is perhaps even more to the point 
to observe that, as a tangible result of these documents, 
Scott came into possession of some £2,000 of Gotherson's />,^ 
money. "^ 

Having thus provided himself with the sinews of war, 
he turned again with fresh confidence to public life. He 
consorted with the colonial representatives in London, 
especially with Hooke of Massachusetts and Winthrop of 
Connecticut; and in particular, he put himself in touch with 
the affairs of the so-called Atherton Company. And with 
this we come upon another and peculiarly characteristic 
example of seventeenth century colonial enterprise. For 
this association, which played no small part in the affairs 
of New England, was a typical product of the period in 
which it flourished, and its history throws much light upon 

18 



OF LONG ISLAND 

the methods by which certain phases of early colonial de- 
velopment were conditioned. 

The facts are briefly these. The Rhode Island Planta- 
tion, as is generally known, was founded between 1636 and 
1640 by Roger Williams and others, among whom was a 
certain John Clarke, who fled or were driven out by perse- 
cution from Massachusetts. The four original settlements 
were united in 1647 under the authority of a patent issued 
three years earlier by the Parliamentary board of Com- 
missioners for the Plantations; though the two divisionr 
of Providence and Rhode Island were separated for a time 
in 1654. Thus far all seems clear enough. But in those 
days of unsettled politics and still more unsettled boun- 
daries, certain ambitious gentlemen of Massachusetts, 
known from their moving spirit, one Colonel or Major 
Atherton, as the Atherton Company, conceived the idea of 
acquiring from the Indians west of the Narragansett a 
tract of land, and there establishing a new colony, despite 
the fact that the territory in question was included in the 
Rhode Island grant. They were somewhat aided in this 
philanthropic design by the fact that there was in existence 
a patent for those lands, professing to have been issued in 
1643, but which, it seems, was not signed by the proper 
persons and therefore presumably not valid. 

Upon these somewhat slender premises they applied to 
the government of Charles II for a patent for their claim, 
endeavoring to have it removed from the jurisdiction of 
the Rhode Island and Providence plantations and annexed 
either to Massachusetts or Connecticut. In this they were 
more or less abetted by the authorities of the latter colonies, 
by John Winthrop in particular; and to this end they 
employed also the talents of Scott. For a time it seemed 
that they might put their scheme through. But, unfortun- 
ately for them, John Clarke, the able and honest repre- 

19 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

sentative of the original proprietors, was still in England, 
and he now used his best endeavors to block the progress 
of this promising land deal. On the side of the Atherton 
Company Scott engaged the interest of Chiffinch, who was 
taken into the Society; and a petition was preferred against 
Clarke and his associates as "enimys to the peace and well- 
being of his Majesty's good subjects." 

This project was, for the time being, successful. A 
letter was secured from the King, and countersigned by 
Bennet, commending the Atherton associates to the "neigh- 
borly kindness and protection" of the four New England 
colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, New-Haven and Con- 
necticut, and urging that the proprietors be permitted 
"peaceably to improve their colony and plantation in New 
England," the King, "having been given to understand that 
his good subjects, Thomas Chiffinch, John Scott, John 
Winthrop and others were daily disturbed and unjustly 
molested in their possessions by certain unreasonable and 
turbulent spirits of Providence Colony." These latter 
conceived themselves to be, and probably were, the rightful 
owners of the land in question, so that their unreasonable- 
ness and turbulence were perhaps not unnatural under the 
circumstances, nor were they much soothed by the royal 
admonition, nor, indeed, much terrified by royal authority. 

Such were the proceedings to which the authorities of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut lent themselves with such 
excellent results. There was only one flaw in the scheme. 
While the Atherton Company had been busy with its back- 
stairs influence, Clarke had gone on the straight and narrow 
path which led, as it proved in this case, to success. The 
extraordinary letter which the conspirators had extracted 
from an easy-going king, obtained, as it were, by stealth, 
was not a document which stood the light of day. It was 
unknown to or ignored by the Council of which the min- 

20 



OF LONG ISLAND 

ister, Clarendon, the enemy of Bennet, was the head. Sev- 
enteen days after the letter came into being, the Council 
passed under the Great Seal a royal charter to Rhode Island, 
which nullified the provisions of the letter and after a long 
period of dispute, finally brought the machinations of the 
Atherton Company to naught. 

Meanwhile Scott had evolved another scheme. At the 
very moment that he was thus being endorsed by Charles, 
he was petitioning that monarch for office; and the peti- 
tion is worthy of notice, if only on biographical grounds. 
Scott's father, it recited, had been an ardent royalist during 
the late disturbances. He had not merely given his life 
to the royal cause; what was more to the present purpose, 
he had sold an estate of £200 per annum and advanced to 
Charles I no less than £14,300. Scott himself had been 
transported to New England, he averred, for his attach- 
ment to the crown; his "small expression of loyalty" having 
been made, as he phrased it, "by cutting the bridles and 
girts of some of the then Parliament's horses at Turnham 
Green." He went on to say that he had been brought 
before a Parliament committee, by whom, in spite of his 
giving them £500, he was sent to New England in the care 
of one Downing and abused. He had bought near a third 
of Long Island; and in consequence of these facts he 
begged Charles to make him governor of that province 
and the adjacent islands, or at least allow the inhabitants 
to choose their own governor and assistants yearly. The 
petition was favorably received by the king, who was "most 
graciously inclined to encourage it." It was referred 
to the committee on Foreign Plantations, and there for a 
time the matter rested. 

While it was being considered, Scott took another step, 
the first, as it was to prove, though he did not guess it, in 
a great and unscrupulous design of far-reaching conse- 

21 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

quence. Upon his complaint that the Dutch had intruded 
on the New England mainland and islands, especially on 
Manhattan and Long Island, an order in Council directed 
Captain Scott, Mr. Maverick and Mr. Baxter, formerly of 
New Netherland, to draw up a narrative of the English 
king's title to that district, the Dutch intrusion, their "de- 
portment, management, strength, trade and government, 
and means to make them acknowledge His Majesty's 
sovereignty." And it is not too much to suppose that they 
drew it strong, for each of them, in his peculiar way, 
wanted something which a transfer of Dutch territories to 
English hands would or might have given him. 

How deep the design was which now enlisted them in 
its toils they could not well have known; for it was as yet 
probably no more than a suggestion, susceptible of a variety 
of interpretations, and a still larger number of possible 
courses of action. But, as events were soon to demon- 
strate, Scott was at the beginning of a policy, which he 
seems to have done much to suggest, of the utmost impor- 
tance not only to his adopted home in America but to 
England and the British Empire generally. And this 
already gives him a certain historical importance. 

Meanwhile he had not neglected his interests in America. 
In these same busy days he had several letters from one 
Captain John Leverett, then titular "governor of Boston," 
in -regard to the Scott claims — one dare not say estates — 
on Long Island. From these it would appear that Leverett, 
who seems to have been induced to act as Scott's agent, 
had been to Long Island to see about the payment of bills 
drawn by Scott upon his old neighbors, or the occupiers of 
the lands he professed to own in that region. Leverett's 
visit was unfruitful, for he writes that these stubborn people 
had not only taken time to consider whether they should 
pay, but that they had sent a certain Captain Young as their 

22 



OF LONG ISLAND 

representative to Boston, to ask for the original writing 
by which Scott was entitled to payment — Leverett having 
only a copy! Upon the latter's failure to produce the 
original patent, Young departed; and, Leverett wrote, th^ 
contumacious party which sent him showed "very unbe- 
coming jealousyes about your actings respecting the writing, 
and also some affirmations about the deed of purchase you 
have for the tract of land." There was, it appeared from 
Captain Young, "no expectation of payment to be had" from 
them. Moreover, Captain Scott's lady had requisitioned 
from the confiding Leverett divers things which he had 
supplied, including some thousands of feet of lumber, for 
which he desired payment to one Francis Smith, then on 
the way to England, together with various sums advanced 
by Leverett on Scott's account to several persons whom he 
enumerates. 

One would like to think that Leverett got his money 
back. Perhaps he did, though it seems at this distance 
somewhat improbable. But if he did not, it was certainly 
not because Scott was in want of funds. By the time 
Leverett's letter advising him of the approach of Smith 
had been despatched, he had received the decision of the 
Plantations Committee on his petition for the governorship 
of Long Island. Despite his moving account of his father's 
sufferings and his own, his request was politely but firmly 
denied for a variety of reasons, some of which, at least, 
appeared in the sequel. And, upon this, having exhausted 
his not inconsiderable ingenuity for the time, he set sail 
for America in the fall of 1663. He did not go empty- 
handed ; for though he had been disappointed in his dearest 
hopes of land grants and office, he had substantial consola- 
tion. He carried with him certainly some part of Gother- 
son's £2,000, and, incidentally, Gotherson's man Prior 
to manage the Long Island estates. He was accom- 

23 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

panied by Gotherson's son, whom, with some other youths, 
he had induced to accompany him to America by hope 
of preferment there; and these, on his arrival, he promptly 
sold into service for sums which probably recompensed 
him for the expense of the voyage. He had, moreover, 
taken the precaution before his departure to secure Mrs. 
Gotherson's jewels to the value of some £200, which also 
accompanied him to America. Moreover, he had been 
commissioned apparently to bring over the Privy Council's 
instructions regarding the Navigation Acts and was thus 
enabled to return in a quasi-official capacity. So, taking 
all these items into consideration, with all his disappoint- 
ments he had concluded a not unprofitable venture. And 
with it there ended another stage of his active career. 

It is apparent in the mere statement of the case that his 
second appearance on Long Island was of a very different 
character from his first. He was now more experienced 
in the ways of the great world. He was a man of substance 
if not of much real property; he had been at court and 
talked with the king; he had even been received into royal 
favor. He had money to spend; and it was not his fault 
that he did not bear his Majesty's commission beside. No 
one as yet knew, in fact, that he did not. With that thought 
a new and brilliant idea took form in his fertile brain and 
presently produced consequences of no small importance to 
him and to others. Why should they know? Why should 
they not remain in that agreeable state of ignorance? 

He was, in a sense, a representative of the English 
government; he had done something at least to direct their 
minds to a new policy; it may well be that he had received 
a hint of what that policy might be, and of possible rewards 
which might accrue to him were it successful and his 
actions agreeable to its promoters. All this was soon re- 
flected in his activities. Before Christmas 1663, Colonel 

24 






OF LONG ISLAND 

Scott, for SO he now aspired to be called, was reported 
buying lands of the Indians, and exercising himself in 
requiring the enforcement of the Navigation Act against 
English goods being carried in Dutch ships. He g6t hi^- . j;^ aih^r^ 
self appointed, apparently on the strength of this, one of 
three commissioners empowered by Connecticut to settle 
the differences with the Dutch of Long Island; and he 
wrote to his friend Williamson, prematurely, that the 
English on the west end of Long Island, long enslaved by 
the Dutch, had rebelled, with the assistance of Connecti- 
cut, and desired that Williamson prevent any trouble with 
the Dutch ambassador until New England could be heard. 
By the fourth of January, 1664, on the strength of his 
assertion that the King had granted Long Island to the 
Duke of York, Flushing, Hastings, Oyster Bay and other 
towns had formed a confederation. He had hiid himself ^['''t2f~ 
made "president" of the English towns on Long Island and 
within a week thereafter, followed by 170 men, he had 
invaded Breuckelen and the neighboring towns "with 
sounding trumpet, beaten drum, flying colors, great noise 
and uproar," declaring England owned the land and that 
he himself would run Governor Stuyvesant through. To 
demonstrate his valor he even struck a little Dutch boy 
who refused to take off his hat to the English flag, 
harangued the people at Midwout "like a quacksalver," 
but failed to shake their allegiance, and so proceeded to 
Amersfoort and New Utrecht, where his men seized the 
blockhouse and fired a royal salute. He was now at the 
climax of his American reputation. New Haven in- 
structed a committee to treat with him about a patent for 
Delaware; Connecticut made him a magistrate on Long 
Island. In this capacity he met the Dutch commissioners, 
and exhibited to them a patent from Charles II granting 
to him the whole of Long Island — which only lacked that 

25 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

monarch's signature to make it valid! The Dutch bent to 
the storm. They extracted from Scott an agreement that 
he would leave their towns unmolested for a month, 
though Scott declared that he would return in the spring 
with the Duke of York and secure not only Long Island 
but all New Netherland for the English crown. In the 
face of this declaration, however, the Dutch authorities 
induced him, some six weeks later, to extend immunity 
for a year — and meanwhile they prepared for war. 

Never was a demonstration better timed; but had Scott 
known just what was in the minds of the English court 
it is possible he would not have lent himself so readily to 
this course of action. For, consciously or unconsciously, 
he had suggested a brilliant and wholly unscrupulous 
design to the party about the Duke of York, to which the 
King, as usual, lent himself. The accusations against the 
Dutch drawn up by Scott, Maverick and Baxter served as 
its foundation. But there were other stones in the edifice. 
For a variety of reasons the court had decided on war with 
Holland; but it was impossible for the court of Charles II 
to follow a straight and honorable course. The war was 
desired partly for reasons of state, but more largely for 
reasons of profit to the court. A sum was subscribed 
among the war party, two expeditions were projected, and 
for them the King's authority to provide a fleet was 
secured. Sir Robert Holmes was despatched to attack the 
Dutch posts in Africa; another expedition under the com- 
mand of Colonel Richard NicoUs was prepared to act 
against New Netherland. That province was granted by 
Charles to his brother, the Duke of York; and in May, 
1664, Nicolls sailed to secure the territory already dis- 
posed of. Thus in the very days that Scott engineered 
his demonstration against the Dutch — perhaps with the 
connivance of his English associates — and so made a pre- 

26 



OF LONG ISLAND 

text for hostilities, the stake for which he played was 
given to another. And, had Scott no other claim to the 
attention of history, the fact that he was one of the prime 
movers in that disreputable design, which brought New 
Netherlands into English hands, would entitle him to a 
place, however dishonorable, in its pages. 

Meanwhile, what of his career after his warlike efforts 
against New Netherland while this project was being set 
on foot? The record of the General Assembly of Con- 
necticut, held at Hartford in March, 1664, while Scott was 
resting from his patriotic exertions, and Nicolls was pre- 
paring his expedition, tells the story clearly and effectively. 
Under the presidency of John Winthrop, the court ordered 
that the letter, with "the warrant and instructions to the 
marshal, that have been read in this court," be attended to. 
That warrant is an illuminating document. It is to the 
effect that "John Scott, inhabitant in the liberties of Ash- 
ford, alias Setawkit, on Long Island, stands charged in 
the court at Connecticut for sundry heinous crimes, to wit, 
for speaking words tending to the defamation of the King, 
for seditious practices and tumultuous carriages in several 
plantations, for abetting and encouraging the natives in 
hostile practices towards each other; for usurping the 
authority of the King in tending to pardon treason; for 
threatening His Majesty's subjects with hanging and ban- 
ishment; for gross and notorious prophanation of God's 
holy day; for forgery and violation of his solemn oath; 
for acting treacherously toward Connecticut colony; for 
usurping authority on pretence of a commission; for 
calumniating a commission officer in this corporation; 
together with a general charge of villainous and felonious 
practices." Even from the briefest summary of this dry 
and formal legal document it will appear to the most casual 
reader that Scott had somehow not commended himself to 

27 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

the authorities of Connecticut. The officials of New 
Haven, Milford, Branford, Stratford, the coast towns, 
and presently those of the islands adjacent, were ordered 
to deliver him to the marshal, Jonathan Gilbert, to be taken 
to Hartford for trial. His property was sequestered and 
commissioners ordered to invoice it and keep it from 
embezzlement; and Scott himself was presently arrested 
and carried to Hartford for trial. 

All this seems a curious return for his military services 
in behalf of the English government; and, on its face, a 
great injustice. Yet the explanation is comparatively sim- 
ple. It lies in the peculiar situation of colonial affairs in 
this transition period. On his return from England, bear- 
ing the Council's instructions in regard to the Navigation 
Acts, he had been received with favor, especially by the 
New Haven authorities, and he had, it may be remembered, 
been appointed a magistrate on Long Island by the Con- 
necticut officials of Hartford. It was the earnest desire 
of the latter to bring Long Island under their jurisdiction 
now that its eastern part had been liberated from the Dutch 
by the Treaty of Hartford. But on that proposition the 
Long Islanders were divided. The Baptists, Quakers and 
Mennonites who had found refuge there from New Eng- 
land persecution dreaded Puritan government; even many 
who favored annexation to relieve them from the fear of 
the Dutch declared they had received little but "if so-be's 
and doubtings" from Connecticut. In this situation they 
had welcomed, if they had not invjted, Scott to help them; '-^-^ 
with what result we have seen. For the opportunity had 
appeared too good to him to be lost; and he had promptly 
taken advantage of his momentary ascendancy to attempt 
to free Long Island from the dominance of Connecticut 
and make it a more or less independent province under 
his own presidency. It was not very surprising that its 

28 



OF LONG ISLAND 

inhabitants were inclined to follow the lead thus given, 
for independence was a very dear thing to them; but it is 
equally natural that the Connecticut authorities were infu- 
riated by his ambitions. 

But — possibly in view of their connection with the 
Atherton Company — Winthrop and his associates consid- 
ered the question of sufficient importance to summon a 
council of the four New England colonies, among other 
reasons because they feared, from Scott's assertions, that 
he was possessed of some secret authority from the Eng- 
lish crown for his actions, which might make proceedings 
against him inadvisable if not positively dangerous. 
Accordingly they wrote to the officials of the other colonies, 
especially to Major-General Leverett of Boston, Scott's 
old correspondent, inviting them to a conference, Scott's 
trial meanwhile being set for May 8th. The invitation 
was promptly accepted. Massachusetts sent down Lev- 
erett and Captain Davis; Plymouth sent William Bradford 
and Thomas Southworth, and these, with other represen- 
tatives, held deep speech on the case. Scott was not with- 
out friends. A hundred and forty-four inhabitants of 
Flushing petitioned for his release; the New Haven dele- 
gates favored him; and the Massachusetts and Plymouth 
delegates inclined to his cause. But Winthrop and his 
followers were firm. Scott was not released, his trial was 
duly held, he was convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine 
of £250, to be imprisoned at the pleasure of the court, 
and to give bond in the sum of £500 for his future good 
behavior. At first Scott blustered and threatened his 
accusers with charges of treason, relying apparently on 
his connection with Chiffinch and Williamson and what- 
ever understandings he may have had with those who pro- 
moted the seizure of New York; but he ended by humble 
submission, repentance, and the retraction of the charges 

29 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

he had made against one person in Connecticut, probably 
the governor. Winthrop was not slow in following up his 
advantage. First the secretary and then the governor 
himself visited Long Island, conferred with the delegates 
of the English towns there; placed them under the author- 
ity of Connecticut; took steps to acquire the land between 
Westchester and the Hudson; met Stuyvesant, who urged 
the Dutch title, which Winthrop incontinently rejected, 
claiming all for England ; replaced all the officials appointed 
by Scott with his own nominees, and so returned triumph- 
antly to Hartford. 

Scott's cause was now wholly lost; and before Winthrop 
had returned he broke jail and escaped, taking refuge with 
his friends on Long Island. Winthrop and his Hartford 
party had won. But their triumph was of few days and full 
of trouble. On the 26th of August the first vessel of Nicolls' 
squadron anchored in Gravesend Bay. It was soon joined 
by others, bearing the levies from the New England 
colonies, as well as English troops. The Connecticut con- 
tingent appeared under the command of Winthrop. The 
Long Islanders gathered in force, conspicuous among them 
Colonel John Scott at the head of his company. Winthrop 
with his followers brought from Nicolls a demand for sur- 
render; and on September 8th, hopeless of defending the 
town in the face of threatened bombardment, Stuyvesant 
ratified the articles of surrender, which had been drawn 
up by commissioners appointed from each side, and New 
Amsterdam passed under the authority of the English 
crown. For Connecticut it was a barren victory. Four 
days earlier, Nicolls had made public the Duke of York's 
patent, and Winthrop had resigned on behalf of Connecti- 
cut her claim to Long Island; and with that the disputed 
province came finally under the authority neither of Scott 



30 



OF LONG ISLAND 

nor Winthrop, who had striven for it so strenuously, but 
of the Duke of York, who never saw it. 

To this historic event there are two corollaries relating 
to Scott. The first is a pass from Nicolls three days after 
the surrender, empowering him to return to his house at 
Ashford, without hindrance from the Connecticut authori- 
ties; and this, at least, he gained by his share in the sur- 
render. The second is a bill from his jailer in Hartford 
for "i2 weeks' dyat and other expenses," Mr. John Scott, 
as the petition relates, having escaped. There is a certain 
grim humor in the court's reply. It grants to the said 
Dan'l Garrad (Garret) the sum of £io out of Mr. John 
Scott's estate, "if he can come at it." That, as one might 
surmise, did not prove possible, and two years later it was 
added to the general levy on the county and so presumably 
ultimately paid by those in whose behalf as well as his own 
the Colonel had striven so valiantly. 

The controversy thus determined on the principle of 
entire injustice to all parties concerned, Scott app_ears to 
have taken up his old life and practices, little altered by 
the passage of years and the changed circumstances in 
which he found himself. Again, as a decade earlier, he 
is reported as buying and selling land, and again his name 
appears in records of lawsuits on Long Island. One man 
he sues for £ioo for slander, the fault is acknowledged 
and Scott forgives him. Another he sues for trespass, 
and with another he divides land bought from a third. 
The "Sunk squa Quashawam" desires and empowers her 
"ancient and great friend John Scott" to sue for all lands 
bought and paid for on Long Island by the English and 
the Dutch, to receive satisfaction for them and to sell all 
lands not already sold. There is a dispute over the Qua- 
quantanock lands, in the course of which Scott was 
appointed to go to Hartford to clear up the town's title 

31 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

with respect to the Earl of Stirling's claims; while Southold 
and Southampton unite to sue Scott for costs and damage 
incurred in connection with land titles. 

And again he is accused of fomenting disturbances 
according to his wonted course among the people of 
Setawket. Against him the governor and council of Con- 
necticut protest to Nicolls that Setawket men say their 
plantation will be destroyed if the claims of ownership 
advanced by him on the ground of purchase from the 
Indians are allowed; and, still further, if the principle of 
engrossing land from the Indians for private uses is per- 
mitted, it will ruin the whole townships. Therefore they 
pray for an order that no land be bought from the Indians 
without consent of the General Court. And from this two 
things appear which throw a light upon the times and the 
position of Scott. He thought he was merely endeavoring 
to secure his share of this world's goods; and perhaps no 
one would have been more surprised to learn that he was 
rather a type than an individual, the representative of a 
principle rather than a mere adventurer in land. 

For, in the first place, Scott did not belong to that inner 
circle, which, in the language of the time, were "those who 
managed." The underlying spirit of his age was monopoly. 
Men formed corporations and associations and secured 
their position by royal patent, which effectually barred 
all competition within their chosen field, whether Indian 
trade or American lands. Perhaps in each case there was 
reason in this, but it unquestionably roused bitter opposi- 
tion among the outsiders. The records of the East India 
companies are full of complaints against those "inter- 
lopers," as they were called, who ventured to infringe the 
monopoly of the licensed company. The annals of the 
colonies are no less full of complaints against those who, 
like Scott, acted on the principle of a fair field and no 

32 



OF LONG ISLAND 

favors, of individual enterprise as against chartered privi- 
lege. It was his misfortune, throughout his whole career, 
to find himself in opposition to those on whom the crown — 
perhaps, in their view. Providence itself — had conferred 
that monopoly against whose restrictions his best efforts 
beat in vain. 

Had he been a different sort of man, it would be impos- 
sible not to feel a considerable sympathy with him in his 
endeavors to break through that charmed circle and estab- 
lish his own fortunes by virtue of his undoubted abilities. 
But the trouble is in his case, as in so many others of like 
sort, that his character deprives us of that sympathy which 
we might otherwise feel. The martyr is so often inferior 
to the oppressor in the qualities which make him endurable 
to society in general; and it is his misfortune, if it is not 
his fault, that he destroys by his own actions that hope of 
common support on which rests whatever hope of success 
he may possess. It is not possible to feel the same admira- 
tion for the Massachusetts authorities or even for Win- 
throp which historians like Bancroft voice in such fulsome 
words ; for it is now no crime to believe that not all of the 
early settlers of America were immaculate or infallible. 
Yet however we may sympathize with the principle for 
which Scott stood, it is difficult to condone the private 
character of the man, even though it was no worse than 
that of the more eminently placed rascals who managed 
to cheat him out of his inheritance and cast him aside as a 
broken tool. 

Still more, it seems probable that the colonial authorities, 
with all their shrewdness — to give it the mildest name — 
in defending their monopoly were, on the whole, right. 
The Indians with whom the colonists dealt had no notion 
of property or titles; they sold the same land over and 
over again, as often as they found a new purchaser. The 

33 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

ensuing complications where this took place may be read 
in every page of colonial history; and had free competition 
been allowed it would have made an end of all security, 
and perhaps in many instances of the settlements them- 
selves. For to unscrupulous operators in land titles this 
situation has offered at all times an opportunity of which 
they have never been slow to avail themselves. And of 
these, as well as of the class opposed to monopoly, Scott 
seems to have been an eminent representative. 

How he managed it is apparent from another order of 
the court, this time in New York. In February, 1665, he 
was ordered to bring in, at the General Court of the Assizes 
following, a certain deed or writing "called by the said 
Captain Scott a Perpetuity, with the King's picture on it 
and a great yellow wax seal afhx't to it which he very 
frequently showed to divers persons, and deceived many 
therewith." At the same time that the authorities of New 
York took this step, their colleagues in Connecticut were 
deliberating whether Scott's fine would reimburse the 
colony for the damage he had done, and were considering 
what further steps should be taken in the matter. In addi- 
tion, he was charged with having stolen the instructions to 
Massachusetts and Mr. Maverick's petition from Lord 
Arlington's office. These actions evidently gave the Colonel 
matter for serious reflection, and when October came, with 
an order from the New York governor for him to appear 
before the General Court of Assizes and produce the letters 
patent which he claimed to possess, show his authority for 
the Long Island lands then in dispute, and, finally, to 
account for his other offenses, together with a warrant for 
his arrest, it seemed that the time for his departure had 
arrived. In point of fact, he had already gone. He gave 
the sheriff the slip, took ship for Barbadoes, and palmed/Ko 
himself off on Col. Morris — notable for his later removal 

34 



OF LONG ISLAND 

to New York, where he settled in that district known as 
Morrisania — as a Quaker escaping from persecution in 
the New England colonies ! He was received, apparently 
with open arms, and so, like a skilful commander, made 
good his retreat to a new position. Thus ended his career 
in America, where, as elsewhere, he was "a bird of prey 
and passage." 

But before he went he made his mark on history, and 
incidentally avenged himself on the courtiers whom he con- 
sidered had cheated him out of his rightful inheritance, 
especially the Duke of York. Though his plan could not 
possibly have brought him any reward, and thus bears 
little relation to his career as he or we conceive it. it is 
noteworthy not only for its ingenuity and efficacy but for 
the extraordinary results it produced on the geography, 
and even on the history of the United States. For it seems 
that to him more than to any other man is due the peculiar 
and unfortunate circumstance; that New York does not 
control both shores of the harbor on which it lies. The 
circumstance finds its first expression in the Duke's divis- 
ion of the lands granted him by the King, his brother. In 
June, 1664, before that grant was confirmed, and while 
Nicolls' expedition was on its way to America, the Duke of 
York conveyed to his followers. Sir John Berkeley and 
Sir George Carteret, members of the Committee on Plan- 
tations, by whose advice New Netherland was seized, a 
territory bounded on the north by a line running north- 
west from the Hudson River at about the location of 
Yonkers, and on the west and south by the Delaware 
River; in short, the district known as New Csesarea or 
New Jersey. The new proprietors promptly drew up a 
constitution modeled on that of Carolina, and sent out a 
governor, Philip Carteret, a relative of Sir George, who 
arrived in the fall of that year. 

35 



COIONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Such was the news which greeted Nicolls at the moment 
he found himself in possession of New Netherland as 
governor of the new province. As a faithful servant of the 
Duke, he was furious; and apparently in November of that 
year he wrote a scathing letter to his master. He had, 
he said, seen the grant which the Duke had made to Berke- 
ley and Carteret for all lands west of the Hudson River; 
and he cannot suppose that either the grantor or the 
grantees could possibly have known how prejudicial it was 
to the Duke's interest or that of New York. He must, he 
went on, "charge it upon Captain Scott, who was born to 
work mischief as far as he is credited or his parts serve 
him. This Scott (it seems) aimed at the same patent 
which your Royal Highness hath, and hath since given 
words out that he had injury done him by your Royal 
Highness, whereupon he contrived and betrayed my Lord 
Berkeley and Sir G. Carteret into a design (contrary to 
their knowledge) of ruining all the hopes of increase in 
this your Royal Highness his territory, which he hath fully 
completed unless your Royal Highness take farther steps 
herein." 

Such was the last account against Scott in the North 
American colonies. One of a little previous date may be 
added to make the story complete. A month before 
Nicolls wrote thus to James, he had written to Morrice, 
then Secretary of State, that Mr. Maverick's petition was 
"stolen from Lord Arlington's office by Captain Scott and 
delivered to the governor and council of Boston — tho' 
Scott said Williamson had given it to him." This same 
Scott, he went on to say, "by a pretended seal affixed to 
a writing in which was the King's picture drawn with pen 
and ink or black lead with His Majesty's hand C. R. and 
subsigned Henry Bennet" had abused His Majesty's honor 
in these parts and had fled to Barbados. But Lord Wil- 

36 



OF LONG ISLAND 

loiighby, then governor of that island, had sent word he 
would arrest Scott and send him prisoner to England. 

This would certainly have seemed enough to settle the 
case of Scott. Pursued by three colonial governors, driven 
from his home by enough counts to keep him in prison 
the greater part of his life, and subject to enough fines to 
ruin what estate he had left, the fugitive would seem to 
have had small chance for any further activities in the 
British empire at least. Moreover, the Gotherson matter 
had come up to plague him again. For, before he fled to 
Barbados, Dorothea Gotherson had petitioned the King 
for an order to Francis Lovelace, deputy-governor of 
Long Island, to consider whether she had any claim to land 
bought there for her son; that her husband had paid John (p^^>-c^ 
Scott £2,000 and had thereby died in debt, his lands had .^., ^■ 
been taken, and though she had brought him an estate of 
£500 a year she was obliged to work for bread for herself 
and her six children. Scott had gone before this matter 
could be attended to, but it remained, as it proved, to vex 
and finally to wreck his fortunes in another land. Mean- -"^ " 
while, Governor Nicolls issued a special warrant to the 
high sheriff to seize all lands, goods, or chattels "which 
Captain Scott hath any right or pretense to within this 
government." 

This was not the end of the matter, even in the colonies. 
Mrs. Gotherson was a persistent as well as a greatly 
wronged woman. A year or two later it appeared she 
agreed with one Thomas Lovelace, kinsman of the deputy, 
that if he could make any money by the sale of her land 
in Kent which her husband had mortgaged, she would bring 
a hundred and twenty families into Long Island "to ye 
g't advantage of ye place." Accordingly, when Governor 
Lovelace went to New York to succeed Nicolls in 1668, 
he appointed a commission, of which Thomas was a mem- 

37 



^6 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

ber, with "Captain Morris of Barbados," to enquire. But 
they could find nothing. The houses which Scott had 
built for Gotherson had been taken dovvn and moved to ^y^' 
Setauket, and given to Mrs. Scott by Governor Nicolls for 
her support after her husband had deserted her. One 
thing, however, the commission did find — Gotherson's son, 
who had been sojd into service by Scott to an inn-keeper -^"° 
in New Haven. That individual was willing to release 
him from his duties as stable-boy for the sum of £7; and 
with that, presumably, Mrs. Gotherson had to content 
herself for the time. And with that, too, as the learned 
gentleman who wrote an account of Scott's life many years 
ago for the Massachusetts Historical Society declares, 
Scott disappears from history. Not quite — for Scott had 
found the refuge which he sought in the West Indies. 
There Lord Willoughby, it appears, intended, in pursuance 
of Nicolls' request, to catch him and send him prisoner to 
England. But again Scott seems to have exercised his 
undoubted charm, drawn upon his credit with Williamson, 
and emerged presently reinstated, and, in so far as pos- 
sible, rehabilitated; for by the middle of the year 1665 we 
find him with a commission in Sir Tobias Bridge's regiment 
stationed there. 

It was a fertile field for his talents, for there was much 
doing in that quarter of the world which might well serve 
as an opportunity to reinstate himself. England was then 
at war with Holland and France; and Barbados, where 
Bridge's regiment was stationed, wa^ a storm-center of 
affairs. Scott landed there in April. In June he, with 
Colonel Stapleton, commanded the reserve in an attack 
upon the French stronghold of St. Kitts, concerning which 
he wrote a full account, in accordance with Willoughby's 
letter to Williamson that the latter's friend Scott "had 
escaped" and would inform him of the flight. Scott was 

38 



OF LONG ISLAND 

not content with describing his own prowess. He took 
occasion to condemn his brothers in arms, and contrasted 
their conduct with his own, — he, according to this account, 
having been wounded in the arm, breast and shoulder, and 
inflicted a loss of twenty wounded on the crews of the four 
boats that tried to take him. Accordingly we find him a 
little later petitioning for rewards. That petition is illumi- 
nating. It recites that in 1665 and 1666 he was in com- 
mand of a small fleet and a regiment of foot on an expedi- 
tion against the Dutch of Tobago and at New Zealand, 
Dissekeeb or "Desse Cuba" and "Trinberan" in Guiana. 
At the latter place, by the help of the Caribbees, he burnt 
and destroyed towns, forts, goods, etc., worth £160,000, 
and spent for His Majesty's service 73,788 pounds of 
sugar. He therefore asks a reward, which, on the basis of 
this and another petition in which he values his expendi- 
tures at £1,620, and includes the loss of a ketch valued at 
£500, he requests £738 at 4^ per cent be charged on the 
Barbados excise. 

Besides these we have another and even more detailed 
account from his pen of the war, and especially of the part 
he took in it. According to that veracious chronicle, he 
declares that in the month of October, 1665, he "having 
been commissionated Commander-in-chief of a small fleet 
and a regiment of soldiers, for the attack of the Island 
Tobago, and several other settlements in the hands of the 
Netherlanders in Guiana, as Morocca, Wacopow, Bowro- 
mome and Dissekeeb, and having touched at Tobago, in 
less than six months had the good fortune to be in posses- 
sion of those countries, and left them garrisoned for his 
majesty of Great Britain, and sailed thence for Barbados, 
where meeting with the news of the eruption of war 
between the two crowns of England and France, endeav- 
oured to persuade Francis Lord Willoughby to reduce those 

39 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

several small garrisons into one stronghold, and offered 
that was the way to make good our post in those parts, 
having to do with two potent enemies, but his Lordship, 
that was his majesty's captain-general in those parts, was 
of another opinion, and embarked on the unfortunate voy- 
age for the reducing of St. Christopher, etc.," in which 
design he perished by a hurricane. 

Besides these, still, we have another and what appears 
to be a wholly independent narrative of the same events, 
under the signature of a certain Captain Byam, who adds 
this eulogy at the beginning of his story: "In November 
1665 there arrived from his Exc^'ce (Lord Willoughby) 
his Serjt Maj^ Jno Scott after his victory at Tobago w^h 
a smal Fleet and a regiment of Foote under the Carrecter 
of Major-General of Guiana, Chiefe Commissioner and 
Commander-in-Chiefe by Land and Sea in a few months 
his great Fortune and gallantry prudent and Industrious 
Conduct made him master of all the great province new 
Zealand & Desseceub settled a peace with the Arrowayes 
left both Collonys in a Flourishing Conditio^ and well 
garrison'd for the King of England," etc. 

Nothing could be clearer than such a story, supported 
by the testimony of two witnesses, one of whom was the 
hero in question. All the story is partly true. Perhaps it 
is all true; and perhaps we should not lay too much stress 
on the fact that the second, though written ostensibly by 
Captain Byam, is only known to us through what purports 
to be a copy — and this copy is in Scott's own hand! 
The story, such as it is, has been accepted by historical 
scholars of the highest consequence; and in view of this 
circumstance, two other pieces of evidence in the case are 
not without interest. The first is a communication from 
Sir Thomas Bridge which relates that "Major Scott sent 
to the governor of St. Kitts with a letter and money for 

40 



OF LONG ISLAND 

the English officers there and to get an understanding of 
the French strength returned with httle satisfaction and 
many complaints. The English officers complained of his 
imprudent carriage in the message and ill deportment in 
the engagement." 

The second is the record of a court-martial held at f^o ^uf^M" 
Nevis by Lord Willoughby's command on January 4,^v<^-^ yiP-t^c^at^^ f • 
1667, before Sir Thomas Bridge, Lieut.-Col. Stapleton, 
Major Androsse and seventeen others, on a charge against 
"Capt. John Scott, late colonel of Sir Tobias Bridge's regi- 
ment of foot." Its findings begin with the observation 
that "the said Scott is generally knowne to bee a notorious 
coward, and wherever hee has been employ'd in His 
Majesty's service has brought great dishonour upon our 
King and Country." From that premise it goes on to the 
specific charges that in the attempt on the mainland fort 
of Morocca "he absented himself at the instant time of 
stormeing the said Fort"; that when the fort was taken 
and the men were on the way back to the ships, he acted 
very badly in the face of the enemy; that when the expedi- 
tion came to Barohmah Fort, as soon as it was within 
gunshot he "sculked away alone in a Boat," until the place 
offered to surrender. Thirdly, that at St. Christopher's, 
where he commanded a foot company, he "left his men 
and sculked under a rock," ran away and stripped himself 
and swam out to the ship, pretending he was wounded. 
Fourthly, to vindicate himself to the Lieutenant-General, 
he aspersed several officers, especially Captain John Cotter. 
And finally that for his dishonorable actions on the main- 
land and at St. Christopher's, he had been frequently 
''basted and cudgelled by soldiers under his command at 
Barbados." All this and more is sworn to and corroborated 
by various witnesses cited before the court, some twelve in 
number, and by the examination of several officers who 

41 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

were not present at the sitting, and on these grounds Scott 
^0 was unanimously found guilty. Moreover, Captain Cotter 
was given leave to go to England and exonerated from all 
of Scott's charges by Lord William Willoughby, who had 
succeeded Francis. 

It seems therefore at least possible that Scott was not 
the hero that he, and his friend Byam, through the medium 
of Scott's pen, painted him, during the entire war, how- 
ever he may have distinguished himself on occasion. And 
to this again there is somewhat to be added. Later in the 
same year Willoughby sent a letter to Williamson by Scott 
declaring that the latter "had done his duty well since 
Portsmouth," and later still, in January, 1668, he writes 
Williamson again that he will come home and give as good 
an account of the Indies as Major Scott, who he hopes 
has arrived, and if so has probably told Williamson "some 
truth but not all gospel." Which observation reveals in 
some sort that Willoughby had not the greatest confidence 
in his late lieutenant's veracity. And that is confirmed by 
the governor's pass to Cotter, which included the somewhat 
irrelevant remark that if Scott had come to trial before 
the court-martial "his smooth tongue would not have saved 
him." 

In any event, Scott left the service and arrived in Eng- 
land some time in the latter part of 1667. That arrival 
is in a sense characteristic of his extraordinary quality of 
reaching a particular spot at the moment when circum- 
stances were favorable to his designs. It had been so in 
1660; it was to be so on at least one other occasion; and 
it was peculiarly true in the present instance. In June the 
Dutch, who were still at war with England, had made 
their raid into the Medway and the Thames. Partly owing 
to that exploit England and Holland had made peace in 
July. In August Clarendon, who had been made the scape- 

42 



OF LONG ISLAND 

goat for the miscarriages of the war, had been driven from 
place and fled from England. And at almost the precise 
moment that Scott arrived in England, big with the news 
and the importance of his heroic exploits in the West 
Indies, and the less romantic but perhaps more accurate 
information that the Dutch and French had been defeated 
in that part of the world, a new ministry was just being 
inducted into office. That ministry, known as the Cabal, 
numbered among its members Scott's old patron, Bennet, 
now Earl of Arlington, who, with two of his colleagues, 
Buckingham and Shaftesbury, played so great a part in 
the determination of Scott's fortunes thenceforth. Here, 
as in his earlier advent at the court of Charles II, was a 
situation made to his hand, and he was not slow to take 
advantage of it. 

His first experience was, however, unfortunate; for the 
year 1668 had hardly dawned when he was arrested for 
debt and taken to the Gatehouse prison. He promptly 
appealed to Arlington for relief, and reiterated — with 
some small additions — his recent eminent services to the 
government. In this petition he raises the sum he spent 
in behalf of his native land to £3,000; asserts that he had 
re-settled Antigua and Montserrat, made peace with the 
Indians before he had been thirty hours in Barbados, and 
had sailed to England on Lord Willoughby's motion, to 
give the King an account of affairs in the West Indies. 
Moreover, he had saved the King's ships from a hurricane. 
He had served a gracious Prince, he concludes, yet for 
£30/10, not yet due, he is in jail without influence on His 
Majesty for release and must go from jail to jail. 

It is a pathetic plea, and Arlington was apparently 
touched by it, for, through some influence, Scott's petition 
for £100 was allowed, and apparently by July or August 
he actually got the money — and how great a feat that was 

43 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

at this precise period of English finance can only be appre- 
ciated by a somewhat intimate acquaintance with the 
circumstances of English administration of the time. He 
got, indeed, much more; for by the end of August a royal 
warrant, countersigned by Arlington, conferred upon him 
a government appointment, the post of royal geographer! 
For he had approved himself, as Buckingham observed in 
later years, a very useful rogue. 

And with this we come to another remarkable passage 
in a remarkable life. For a dozen years or more Scott had 
played some little part in public affairs. Now, inspired by 
the situation in which he found himself, and mindful of 
his unusual gifts and experiences, he aspired not to make 
but to write history. As soon as he was settled in his new 
post — probably even before — he had begun an attempt 
to justify his appointment by the execution of a great work 
on the "Coasts and Islands of America." This included, 
among other things, a "Discription of Guiana," which was 
one day to give him standing in the world where even he 
could scarcely have imagined it. 

What, we may well ask, were the qualifications of such 
a man to undertake this most difficult form of literary 
composition; what was his training, his purpose, and his 
hope of success in that field? That question was to be 
asked again on at least one occasion of great importance; 
and, as he has given the answer in his own words, it is 
proper that they should be inserted here. For his methods 
as he described them were so precisely those of Herodotus, 
the father of history — or, according to his enemies, the 
father of lies — that they may well be quoted in their 
entirety. 

"In my youth," Scott begins his narrative, 'T was a 
great lover of Geographic and History in Generall, but 
aboute the Eighteenth yeare of my age I tooke up a reso- 

44 



OF LONG ISLAND 

lution to make America the scene of the greatest actions 
of my Hfe, and there to sett myselfe a worke (if possible) 
to finde out the Latitudes, the Longitudes, and to know the 
oridginall discovery with the situations of all places both 
on the Continent and in the Islands; as also the names of 
Persons and of what Nations they were who have possessed 
them, and what fortune each Nation hath had, and (as 
neare as I could) the fortune of the severall governors 
successively, and of the respective Collonies, the most 
remarkable distempers and diseases, the Commodityes 
abounding and advantages of trade, what places were more 
or less Tenable of Nature, and what were made strong by 
fortifications, in what manner, and to what degree; More- 
over how these colonies have prospered or declined in 
Trade, increased or decreased in number of Inhabitants 
from Europe, and the proper causes thereof; Together 
with the strength of the severall Indian Nations, their 
customes, Governments, and Commodities, and what advan- 
tages may be made of them in point of Warr or by Trade. 
I labour'd likewise to discover the Rocks, Sandes Shelves, 
and Soundings about every Island, and in the Entrance of 
all Ports, Havens, Rivers, and Creeks, as well on the Terra 
firma as the Islands, my scope at first being only for my 
owne particular sattisfaction, but now I am not out of 
hope these things may be both of some reputacion to 
myselfe, and a generall advantage to the English Nation, by 
which especially I shall have my end and reckon these 
eighteene yeares past, by running through all manner of 
dangers (at seve'll times) to make Collections and Obser- 
vations, have been spent to good purpose for my Country, 
and thereby put mee in possession of the greatest fellicity 
that can befall a man in this life." 

'T had once a purpose," he continues, "to have given 
you a large discription of all America," but considering 

45 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

the Spanish Indies had been fully treated, he decided to 
confine his book to "new accounts from observations of 
my owne (or such living Testimonies as I could credit) 
Touching those places which have not been sufficiently sett 
forth by any man before me; Purposely omitting that part 
of the Spanish Indies that I have noe knowledge of. . , . 
I chose rather to content myself e with what (in great 
part) I know, what my owne eyes have seen, and much of 
what my feet have trodden, and my sences brought under 
an exact inquiry, confineing my selfe with the River 
amazon on the South . . . from whence in my Mappes 
and History I pass Northward to Newfound Land. 

''More than 1200 miles along the shore, surveying all 
the Islands worth notice, comprehended within that vast 
part of the Atlantick Ocean one hundred and six of which 
Islands I have been Personally upon, have Travelled most 
parts of New England and Virginia, and a greate part of 
Guiana, and other places of the Maine between the Tropick 
of Cancer and the forementioned grand River, and with 
Shipps and Barques have sayled into very many of the 
Rivers, Bayes, Ports, and Creeks within the two boun- 
daries of this discription. As for those places which have 
not come under my survey, and the Originall of many of 
the Colonies, whether English, Spanish, French or Dutch, 
whose plantacions are settled beyond the Memory of any 
man that I could meet with, in such cases I took my meas- 
ures from the best authors, as Herera Ovida and Acosta 
among the Spaniards, Thunis a grave Authour among the 
French, John Delaet among the Dutch and from many 
other Authours and sev'll curious manuscripts that came to 
my hand besides the Carts of which I ever labour to gett 
the best extant and besides actually to converce with good 
Artists that had been upon the place, and such persons I 
•ever strove to oblidge and draw to me of what so ever 

46 



OF LONG ISLAND 

Nation they were; I made it my business likewise to pur- 
chase or borrow all the historys and Journalls that I 
could heare of whether Lattin Ittalian Spanish or Portu- 
gais French Dutch or in our Language, wherein I may say 
I have by reason of a generall generous conversation had 
luck extraordinary, and herein what paines I have taken 
what cost I have been att is so Notorious, that over and 
above the knowledge of a great number of Gentlemen 
which I have been oblidged too for a communication of 
printed books, Manuscripts, Patents, Commissions, and 
papers relating to those parts, the many booksellers of 
England and Holand will doe me Right to testifie my 
continuall inquisition." 

Concerning this simple and modest narrative of the 
historian-errant, there is perhaps only one observation 
necessary. It is that, taken in connection with the 
extremely active life which Scott led during those same 
years in which he was engaged upon his historical labors, 
one can only marvel at his extraordinary industry and 
concentration and his application to such scholarly ideals 
when his mind must have often been so busy with other 
matters than the pursuit of ultimate truth. 

Perhaps in this connection, if it is not too wearisome, 
it may be interesting to compare with this, and with the 
narrative of his life up to this point, the preface which he 
composed for this great work. Amid the strenuous activi- 
ties with which his earlier and later years were filled it may 
be worth a quiet hour to stop, as he did, and contemplate 
the eternities and immensities. 

"Deare Countrymen," he begins : "Forasmuch as man 
is not borne for himselfe, or to confine his Aimes within 
the narrow compass of his owne poor pleasures or advan- 
tages, but being a creature of celestiall extract ought ever 
to be looking upwards from whence he came. Proposing to 

47 



yJ i i\ ^Vv>V« 'i 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

himselfe an imitation of God, that universall goodness 
after whose image he is made, and after that Glory and 
greatness in some measure, which is absolutely and infin- 
itely inherent only in him, but displayed throughout the 
frame of this wonderfull Globe of Heaven and Earth 
(which glory consists in the Ample manifestation of that 
goodness by acts of benevolence towards the whole race of 
mankinde, doing good through all generations, teaching 
us thereby what we ought to doe for one another) There- 
fore Pardon mee (Sirs) if I who, knowing the circum- 
stances of my owne Life have reason enough to consider 
that having been bred much in warrs, & the world might 
judge those imployments might neither give mee time, nor 
inclinations for such a worke do yet nevertheless presume 
to tell you that I would faine be an humble follower of 
that great Example of publick good, because we are all 
commanded to follow it and be like him," he has, in brief, 
begun this book ''because it comes attended with all the 
affections & dutyes which I owe unto our Native Coun- 
try." As to the subject matter, he continues, "Perad- 
venture the like may not be scene again, if I perish before 
the Publication; and this is said (I assure you) not in 
vanity of mind to prize myselfe above others, but rather 
to magnifie God's goodness to me who hath by carrying me 
through innumerable labours and hazards, in various 
imployments, given me such opportunities as have not been 
afforded to many in times past & will rarely befall any one 
man hereafter, in that part of the world which I intend to 
discribe." 

This, among its other revelations, shows that Scott's con- 
nection with Southwick and the Gothersons was, after all, 
not wholly without its effect upon at least his literary style. 
One part of this entertaining preface is unquestionably true, 
the like of Scott's narrative, even so far as it went, has not 

48 



OF LONG ISLAND 

been seen again. It is a loss to literature that he was not 
permitted to complete this great work and that only a part 
of what he did write has seen the light of print; and when 
one considers under what auspices his efforts did finally 
appear, it goes far to justify his assertions and to increase 
the regret at its incompleteness. But if it is unfortunate 
that he never completed this work, it is perhaps a still 
greater loss to posterity that he was able to enjoy his new 
dignity so short a time. Three days before Scott was 
commissioned royal geographer, Col. Richard Nicolls, 
having been superseded as governor of New York by Col. 
Francis Lovelace, sailed for England, where he arrived in 
the latter part of the year 1668. Within six months we 
find, whether in consequence of his arrival or of other 
circumstances, two pieces of evidence material to the case 
of Scott. The first is a series of communications from 
Dorothea Gotherson to Governor Lovelace and his brother 
Thomas reciting the fact that she had appealed to the King 
to right her wrongs; that Charles had taken pity on her; 
and that steps had been taken through the Council to 
communicate with Lovelace, with what result we have 
already seen, in the discovery of her son and the attempt 
to recover some of the property lost through Scott. • A- 

The second is an intimation that on Nicolls' arrival in 
England he informed the king of Scott's career in 
America, and that upon this Scott "vanished from White- 
hall." That he did vanish appears from another note from 
Mrs. Gotherson indicating that she had received letters- 
from him, and expressing the hope that he would return 
from Holland, whither, it appears, he had gone. To this 
may be added a communication from Scott to Williamson 
disavowing all connection with a certain Andrews whom 
Scott had recommended and who had committed some 
unnamed villainy, with the result that, joined to these other 

49 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

circumstances, Scott completely lo^t Williamson's favor ''^ 
and with it his principal claim to recognition and respect- 
ability. It is perhaps small wonder that this is accom- 
panied by "a scrap of paper," requesting "prayer for a 
troubled, sinful, and almost despairing soul." He did not 
return from Holland for reasons known to himself and to i^"^ 
the English government, and probably not wholly unsus- 
pected even by Mrs. Gotherson. 

What those reasons were, and in what activities and 
society he busied himself is shown, among other testimony, 
by the deposition of a certain John Abbot, an English 
resident of Haarlem. He declared, in later years, that 
between 1669 and 1672 he had often had at his house "one 
John Scot, commonly called Major General Scot," who 
went in company with "an ancient gentleman. Coll. 
Wogan," William Cole, Dr. Richardson, and a Mr. Ray, '^" 
alias John Phelps. He deposed further, that Scott had 
maps and charts of the West Indies, that he was a man 
evilly spoken of, and that in spite of the fact that he heldi'''''''^jv 
a commission in the Dutch army, he had on at least one 
occasion been soundly beaten by Abbot's servant. Taking 
all these things into account, there can be little doubt that 
this was the royal geographer. 

But who were these new associates, and what was he 
doing in Holland? The answer is not wholly clear, but 
there is evidence enough to enable one to arrive at an 
approximation to the truth. Wogan and Phelps had been 
members of the high court of justice which had condemned 
Charles I to death. Dr. Richardson was one of the most 
active movers in the Nonconformist plot which had led to 
a rising in the northern counties of England in 1663. All 
were proclaimed outlaws and traitors. Their chief busi- 
ness was the fomenting of disturbance against the govern- 
ment of Charles II; their chief hope was to overthrow 

50 



OF LONG ISLAND 

that government; their chief means of support lay in 
certain contributions taken up among the faithful in 
England under guise of sending aid to the Waldensians, 
the persecuted Vaudois, or the "Poles"; and there is 
evidence that Scott benefitted by this "Polish fund." These 
men were, in short, the center of a widespread intrigue, 
which had for its purpose the creation of trouble for the 
English authorities by whatever means that could be 
accomplished. 

They had many friends and correspondents throughout 
the world, and with Scott's entry into this circle he came 
in touch with the underground politics which played such ''^ 
a part in the reign of Charles II, and was thenceforth to 
condition the late royal geographer's career to the end of 
his life. In this the old Cromwellians had their full share. 
Upon the Restoration, their party had been broken up. 
Some leaders, like Vane and Harrison, had been seized 
and executed. Some, like General Lambert, whose popu- 
larity prevented the government from bringing them to 
the block, were doomed to life imprisonment. Some, like 
Goffe, Whalley, Dixwell and Bourne, found refuge in 
America. Some, like Ludlow, Sidney, and Lisle, fled to 
Switzerland. A few took service in continental armies, ^t 
Others, like those with whom Scott now consorted in this 



r 



l^illct:^-- "^ f-^^ 



"Adventure of the Regijcides," remained in the Netherlands. n'c^^^"^ 

There they were in close touch with the Dutch government 
on the one side, and on the other with the discontented 
Nonconformist element in England that had been driven 
first from the church then from politics by the so-called 
Persecuting Acts of the Anglican party during the Claren- 
don administration, which had thus endeavored to crush 
Nonconformity once and for all. They were a distinct 
menace to the English government, which could take no 
step without reckoning the possible danger from these men 

51 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

and the aid which they might bring to the enemies of 
England. Many of them had actually taken part in the 
recent Anglo-Dutch war. At least one Cromwellian officer 
had commanded troops on English soil against his coun- 
trymen, in an effort to take Harwich fort; while in the 
famous raid up the Medway and the Thames the Dutch 
fleet had been partly manned, and probably largely piloted, 
by English sailors in Dutch service. 

It was therefore natural enough that a fugitive like 
Scott should seek and find refuge and a welcome among 
this group. It was no less natural that he should acquire 
a commission in the Dutch service ; and it was perhaps most 
natural of all that he should seek to turn his gifts and 
knowledge to the account of his own advantage in this 
environment. One need not accept Mrs. Gotherson's 
theory that he used the information which had come in 
his way as commander in the West Indies and as royal 
geographer to further his fortunes with the Dutch authori- 
ties; but there was good ground for that hypothesis and 
it is not easy to believe that he found these any handicap 
in his new venture. 

At any rate, it seems certain that he commanded at 
least a company in the Dutch army, though it is not probable 
that he derived his title of Major-General from that cir- 
cumstance. It is equally certain that he was implicated 
with, a man named Despontyn in various dubious financial 
transactions relating to that company's pay. He entered 
into a plan to defraud a Jew of a considerable sum; he 
cheated his landlady. It is not necessary to accept the 
story that he defrauded the States of Holland out of £7,000 
or £8,000, and that he was driven from the country and 
hanged in effigy there in consequence; but probably only 
the amount and the disgrace were exaggerated; the main 
fact seems clear. There is, moreover, evidence to show 

52 



OF LONG ISLAND 

that he provided his new employers with maps, soundings 
and plans of the defenses of English harbors, and infor- 
mation of English naval strengths and designs, and in so 
far Mrs. Gotherson's surmises were justified. And there 
is only too much evidence that this same Scott, "shield- 
bearer and geographer-royal," as he styled himself, was, 
during his stay in Holland, at once dishonest and dissolute 
in a large variety of ways not necessary to enumerate here. 

Meanwhile English affairs, during the period of Scott's 
sojourn in Holland, took a fresh turn in that devious course 
which they pursued throughout the Restoration period, and 
in so doing unconsciously helped Scott in determining his 
own course, in whose direction he was ably assisted by the 
authorities of the countries in which he successively sought 
refuge and a livelihood. His stay in Holland coincided 
almost exactly with the period during which the Cabal 
remained in power. That period bears a peculiar reputa- 
tion in English history, and one not wholly favorable to 
its policy or its members. This is not surprising, whether 
we consider the character of some of its members, the 
policies which they pursued in their collective capacity, 
and, in particular, the fact that their history has been 
written chiefly by their enemies, the Anglicans. Whatever 
religion they professed or despised, they were none of them 
of the latter party, whose overthrow brought them to 
power, and whose revival drove them in turn from place. 

The first act of their administration had been the signa- 
ture of the Triple Alliance with Holland and Sweden to 
check Louis XIV's aggressions. Yet they bore no love 
for the Dutch, who were the chief rivals of that interest 
to which the Cabal devoted its best talents — the develop- 
ment of English commerce. That feeling was shared, on 
different grounds, perhaps, by their sovereign, who, in 
1670, signed the secret Treaty of Dover with his cousin, 

53 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

the French king, in return for a substantial pension. 
Thereafter events moved toward an Anglo-French alliance 
and a joint attack on Holland; and, at about the time that 
Scott found his position in Holland becoming difficult, his 
government began to take steps to prepare for war with 
that power. The Nonconformists were conciliated in so far 
as possible, and many of the exiles were pardoned and per- 
mitted to return. A royal Declaration of Indulgence gave 
virtual toleration to the Dissenters. The stop of the 
Exchequer provided the government with a sum which, 
added to a Parliamentary grant, enabled the administra- 
tion to equip the navy; and hostilities began by an attempt 
to seize the Dutch Smyrna fleet. Louis XIV poured his 
armies into the Netherlands and Holland faced one of 
the most dangerous crises in her troubled history. 

And what of Scott in these busy days of broken alliances 
and international treacheries? The evidence is conflicting, 
as it well might be. Some of it goes to show that he 
improved his stay in Holland to inform his own govern- 
ment of the doings of the exiles, and carried on negotia- 
tions between them and the English authorities. Some 
of it seems to suggest that the attack on the Smyrna fleet 
failed owing to a warning sent the Dutch by Scott. That ^"^^^ 
there is ground for believing that all of this is more or 
less true appears from certain testimony that he was 
employed by Arlington to live at Bruges as a spy; that he 
was seen there by other English agents — notably the first 
English woman novelist, Apra Behn — in the exercise of 
his profession; that he was paid by the English consul 
there ; and that he presently lost his employment for having Ao 
opened negotiations with the Dutch. And there is nothing 
incompatible with his own character or that of the times 
and class which he adorned in the supposition that he took 
his profit where he found it, and was paid by both sides. In 

54 



OF LONG ISLAND 

any event, his stay in Bruges seems to have been of few 
days and full of trouble, for, besides his other misfortunes, 
he was found sketching the fortifications of the place, was 
driven out and compelled to seek refuge in Paris. There 
he arrived, as usual, at the opportune moment ; for England 
and France, allied against Holland, found themselves 
again in accord, and prepared to employ the services of one 
so recently in Dutch service. 

He did not go empty-handed. As in his earlier exodus 
to and from the court of Charles H, he brought to Paris 
an interesting collection of curiosities. First among them 
were the maps and plans upon which he always relied, and 
not without much reason, to give him standing in a new 
community. Moreover, he seems to have secured from 
various persons various small sums of money to meet his 
unavoidable expenses, a "Silver Belt, a Fowling-peece or 
two, two or three copper-plates of Mapps, one great picture, 
of great value as he pretended, and two swords, one whereof 
(to magnify its value) he pretended to have been Crom- 
well's." Nor was this all, for we find one Sherwin, the 
inventor of a new method of casting ordnance, writing 
about this time to the Marquis de Seignelay, French Minis- 
ter of Marine, begging him to recover two little cannon, 
stolen by Scott, whose "intrigues have ruined the whole 
enterprise" of supplying the new guns to the French 
government. 

Thus equipped, he arrived in Paris at a propitious time 
to dispose of the information he possessed, and he found 
the French capital a fertile field for the exercise of his 
peculiar talents. He was nothing if not impartial, and he 
was as little bound by any weak scruples of patriotism as 
the most recent of internationalists. His career, indeed, 
began auspiciously, for as he had earlier informed the 
English of Dutch designs, and more recently enlightened 

55 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

the Dutch regarding the English plans, he was now in a 
position to provide the French with information regarding 
both the English and the Dutch, and in a fair way, if oppor- 
tunity presented itself, to gain material which could be 
disposed of, in turn, to England, or even to Holland, if 
circumstances seemed to make it necessary or profitable. 

He set up at first apparently as a map-maker and a 
geographical expert, with what more obscure relations with '^^ 
the French government may be surmised. He had, it ^ 
would seem, no great skill himself in cartography, but he 
was fortunate enough to be able to find a man who could 
draw, and him he supplied with data from his own knowl- 
edge, and, on at least one recorded occasion, from his 
imagination. Meanwhile he strove, not without success, 
to ingratiate himself with those in place and power. He 
dabbled in alchemy, he even seems to have dreamed of 
getting a French ship and turning pirate. He had some 
k oJyinlK: obscure connection with a certain Mile, des Moulins, to 
whom he wrote letters in French, signed ''Jean Scot of 
Scot's Hall," and from whom he received varigus sums r' o 
for expenses in journeys made on her account. And it 
may be noted here, as perhaps only a peculiar coincidence 
but possibly a matter of not entirely extraneous interest, 
that a man of that name sometime in Dutch service, some- 
time secretary to the Earl of Arlington, was hanged in 
England about this time on a charge of treason. 

Scott was more fortunate. He seems to have been 
employed in sorne capacity by the Prince de Conde, under ^ 
circumstances of such peculiar character that it seemed 
necessary to the French authorities a little later to deny 
categorically that he had ever been in the immediate service 
of the French government, without, however, committing 
themselves to the indiscretion of alluding to his connection 
with Conde. Beyond this there are scattered notices of 

56 



OF LONG ISLAND 

other and less public activities. He seems to have stolen a 
locket from a certain M. Delavall, a hat from one man, 
a muffler from another. He managed to make the acquaint- 
ance of a Catholic nobleman, the Earl of Berkshire, then 
resident in Paris — a connection which was presently to be 
of some service in bringing him again into the public eye; 
and he seems not to have wholly severed his relations with 
the less obtrusive side of English administration, for there 
is evidence that at least during the year 1677 he was at 
times in London, in close touch with Sir Ellis Leighton, 
chief agent of the Duke of Buckingham, upholding the 
French interest, denouncing William of Orange, and 
frequenting the purlieus of the court. 

Thus he passed some busy years. Meanwhile the situa- 
tion in European, and more particularly in English politics, 
altered, and with it came a corresponding change in Scott's 
position and his relationships. While he had thus busied 
himself England and France had made their joint attack 
on Holland. On the continent the courage of the Dutch 
held the Anglo-French attack at bay, and though the 
outbreak of war had been accompanied by a revolution 
which cost the Dutch leader, John de Witt, his life, it 
brought to the head of affairs a greater spirit, William HI, 
whose abilities presently drew together an alliance against 
Louis XIV. The support of England became the prize for 
which the rival groups of allies contended. London was 
filled with their agents, the French striving to hold the 
English to their allegiance, the Dutch, the Imperialists 
and the Spaniards striving to detach them from the French 
cause. The Cabal was driven from power, and succeeded 
by the Anglican or Court Party under the Earl of Danby. 
Little by little the English people were awakened to the 
true significance of Louis XIV's designs. The struggle 
v/as transferred to the House of Commons, which first 

57 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

summoned Arlington and Buckingham before it to account 
for the miscarriages of the war and their part in the illegal 
proceedings which had preceded it; and then, under the 
direction of the leaders of the Country Party, in which 
Buckingham and Shaftesbury came to play the principal 
roles, turned upon the King and the French policy. 

The result was a complete reversal of parts in English and 
in Continental affairs. The English king was compelled 
to break with France, to make peace with Holland, and to 
give his consent to the marriage of his niece with William 
of Orange. That astute prince made head against his 
enemy. The Imperialists, having defeated the Turks, were 
enabled to throw their strength against the western front. 
The English Parliament voted great supplies, authorized 
the raising of an army and pressed forward to war with 
France on the side of the grand alliance now formed 
against Louis XIV. In the face of these events the Grand 
Monarque was compelled to peace, and in the month of 
August, 1678, diplomats assembled at Nymwegen to 
negotiate the great treaty which takes its name from that 
place. 

Meanwhile the situation in England was complicated 
by the introduction of a religious element. From the begin- 
ning of the reign of Charles II the Catholics had bestirred 
themselves to recover what they might of the position 
they once held in the British Isles. The king himself was 
not unfavorable to their cause. His brother, James, Duke 
of York, with many members of the court, openly embraced 
the ancient faith; and among the results of the anti-French 
agitation the passage of a Test Act drove him, with his 
co-religionists, from civil and military command. The 
Catholic minority, like the Cromwellians before them, 
resorted to conspiracy against the government of Charles 
II. The king, who had assented to the secret treaty of 

58 



OF LONG ISLAND 

Dover, which contained a clause looking toward the 
re-establishment of Catholicism in England, took no steps 
to combat the movement. The people became aroused to 
the danger, and their alarm was fostered by the leaders of 
the Country Party. The result was an explosion. At 
almost precisely the same moment that the diplomats 
assembled at Nymwegen one of the most extraordinary 
episodes in English history began its spectacular course, 
for the King was warned that there was a Catholic con- 
spiracy, famous as the so-called Popish Plot, then on foot 
against his person and his crown, as well as against English 
Protestantism. 

To that warning, drawn up in the form of an elaborate 
memorandum by two men, Titus Gates and Israel Tonge, 
he paid little heed. But when, two months later, a London 
justice of the peace, Sir Edmundberry Godfrey, before 
whom Gates had sworn out a copy of his information, was 
found murdered, the London mob, the English people and 
in particular the Whig party, under the able leadership of 
Shaftesbury and Buckingham, were roused to a frenzy, 
unparalleled in English history. The whole great mystery 
was thrown at once into politics. The Whigs saw in it an 
opportunity to dispose of their rivals, especially the Duke 
of York, whom they hoped to exclude from the succession 
to the throne. So far as may be judged from this dis- 
tance, the ambitions of Shaftesbury lay in the direction of 
overthrowing Danby and making the accession of the Duke 
of York to the throne impossible, with whatever dreams he 
may have had of directing English affairs himself as the 
head of a dominant party in the state. What designs the ^^L 
Duke of Buckingham entertained are still more difficult t^ ^l- w cM^ti 
determine, but it seems not improbable that among them 
was some wild project of becoming, if not king, at least 
Lord Protector of the realm, to whose crown he pretended 
to possess hereditary claims. 

59 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

But this much is certain. Almost if not quite alone of 
all the characters who have played a part in English history 
the brilliant and erratic Buckingham surrounded himself 
with a group of bravos, which comprised some of the 
greatest scoundrels left unhung in England. There was 
that Christian who became the model for the villain in 
Scott's novel of Peveril of the Peak. There was Colonel 
Blood, who had achieved eminence by his all but successful 
attempt to steal the crown and sceptre from the Tower 
some years before. These were fair types of the lower 
order. Among those of higher rank was Lord Howard of 
Escrick, perhaps the most finished rascal of his time; and, 
not to call more names, there was the Duke's representa- 
tive in Paris and at times elsewhere, Sir Ellis Leighton. 
For while Shaftesbury relied on his wits, on the famous 
Green Ribbon Club which formed the active principle of 
the Whig party, and on the "brisk boys" of the London 
mob, the Duke, whether his designs were deeper or his 
morals more blunted, was not so nice in his taste in 
supporters. 

Another group was perhaps more respectable in its per- 
sonnel, if not more scrupulous in its designs. About the 
Duke of York had grown up a Catholic cabal among whose 
membership were numbered such names as Lord Bellasis 
and Lord Powis; Lord Petre; the Duke's secretary, Cole- 
man; and a company of lesser agents, among whom a 
section of the Jesuits were the ablest though not the most 
conspicuous. What their aims were we have already sug- 
gested, the succession of James to the throne, and the 
elevation of Catholicism to equality if not supremacy in 
the state. 

In such a golden age of conspiracy nothing could have 
been more natural, indeed one might almost say inevitable, 
than that Scott should have found some part to his liking, 

60 



OF LONG ISLAND 

and, what was always to his liking, his interest. Just how 
he came into touch with Buckingham we know, but the 
means are certainly peculiar. For he seems to have been 
recommended to Leighton about 1676 by Peter and Richard 
Talbot, Irish Catholics then resident on the continent for 
reasons best known to the English government, and with 
some obscure relation to the Duke of York. Leighton, in 
turn, brought Scott to the attention of Buckingham, who 
found him, as he said, a very useful rogue. There may be 
some clue to this mysterious connection between Scott, 
Leighton and the Talbots in the fact that Scott had com- 
mended himself to the Earl of Berkshire by professing 
himself, according to the testimony of one of the Earl's 
servants, as belonging to the same communion as that of 
the exiled nobleman, that of the Catholic church. 'H^ 

At any rate he was soon a member of the company of 
choice spirits enrolled under the banner of Buckingham. 
In September, 1678, the Duke seems to have visited France, 
incognito. There at Abbeville he met Scott and "such 
company as ought to be seen in disguise," and probably at 
that time made such plans as were soon revealed in Scott's 
actions. For in November we find Buckingham writing to 
Louis XIV desiring to be of use to that monarch, especially 
for "the last favor" from the French King's hands. The 
bearer, Mr. Scott, he goes on to say, will tell him orally 
the message he sends. This was accompanied by another 
letter to M. de Pomponne, in the same tenor and by the 
same hand. All of which, ostensibly, had to do with a 
plot to assassinate Louis. 

Meanwhile in England the Popish Plot agitation under 
skilful manipulation had assumed the dimensions Nof a 
national panic. Oates and Tonge became popular heroes. 
Every Catholic fell under suspicion, and arrests were made 

61 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

right and left. The Earl of Powis, Lord Petre, Lord 
Bellasis, Viscount Stafford and Lord Arundel of Wardour 
— the principal men named in Oates' information — were 
taken into custody, and presently impeached. Coleman 
and six other men — almost certainly the wrong ones — 
were tried and executed as quickly as the machinery of 
the law could be set in motion. Many more were accused 
and hard put to it to defend themselves. Parliament passed 
the Test Act excluding Catholics from office, Danby was 
impeached, and by March, 1679, the Duke of York was 
compelled to seek refuge in Brussels. 

Thus began that great episode which so greatly dis- 
turbed the course of English politics in the years 1678 
and 1679 and diverted English attention even from the 
Peace of Nymwegen, which the French King had mean- 
while been compelled to sign with his enemies. It need 
hardly be said that the Whigs, under the lead of Shaftes- 
bury and Buckingham, embraced the opportunity thus 
afforded them to press hard their attack upon the Duke of 
York. Every device of political agitation, every means 
of furthering the Plot was relentlessly used by them ; every 
informer encouraged, every "discovery" exploited. In 
turn, after Oates and Tonge, there came other witnesses 
on the scene, Bedloe, Prance, Dugdale, and others less 
notable, a choice collection of criminals, conspirators and 
perjurers, to give evidence concerning the Plot and the 
murder of Godfrey, to be rewarded for their services, 
and, in general, to save the country from the evils which 
threatened it. 

With such matters stirring in the world, this was no 
time for such a man as Scott to be idle; and we find him, 
in consequence, going back and forth between England 
and France, busily engaged, apparently on Buckingham's 
errands. Here too we get finally a glimpse of what sort 

62 



OF LONG ISLAND 

of man he was in his external appearance. On October 
19, 1678, traveling at Gravesend under the name of 
Godfrey, he is shown in the flesh. "A proper well-sett 
man in a great light coulered Periwigg, rough-visaged, 
haveing large haire on his Eyebrows, hollow eyde, a little 
squintain or a cast with his Eye, full faced about ye cheekes, 
about 46 yeares of Age with a Black hatt & in a streight 
boddyed coate cloath colour with silver lace behind." Thus 
for the moment we have him, held by the order of the 
Admiralty Secretary, Pepys, who did not then apparently ^^ 
know who or what he was, save that his actions had led to 
suspicion. 

By whatever method, he seems to have got safe away, 
but a month later (November 8, 1678) a royal warrant 
addressed to Col. Strode, the Lieutenant of Dover Castle, 
directed him to seize Scott as soon as he should land at 
Dover. For his numerous journeys in the preceding 
months in various guises and under various names, usually 
Godfrey or Johnson, had made him suspect to the English 
government, especially in view of his unbridled tongue. 
With all his gifts, Scott's volubility made him peculiarly 
unfitted for the role of a conspirator. He had continually 
boasted himself a friend of Buckingham, continually acted 
in "violent and overbearing fashion," was often "full of 
Guinneyes," "without any visible estate to support him- 
self with," not seldom drunk, and known to carry with 
him maps, plans and estimates of naval and ordnance 
matters. Thus, wherever he went he was a marked man, 
and one, under the circumstances, to be watched and, if 
possible, apprehended. Despite all this he was not caught, 
and it was not until the following spring that he came 
again into public life. 

The circumstances were, like most circumstances in his 
life, extraordinary. In March, 1679, the Earl of Berk- 

63 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

shire died in Paris. Some weeks after that — to be exact, 
on April 28 or 29, a fortnight after Danby had been com- 
mitted to the Tower, and at the moment that Parhament 
had passed a resolution against the Duke of York — there 
arrived at Folkestone a man who called himself John John- 
son. On his way to London, it seems, he was arrested at 
Dover and there compelled to give an account of himself, 
which he was, apparently, by no means loath to do. He 
was, he said, a pensioner of the Prince of Conde. He had 
formerly commanded the Prince's regiment of horse in 
the French service and had surveyed the Prince's land in 
Picardy and Burgundy. His name was Scott, the occasion 
of his return was to see his native country, his profession 
that of a soldier, his landing at Folkestone only to see the 
boatman that had transported him in the preceding October, 
"whom he understood to be in great trouble for carrying 
him over." He offered to take the oaths of Supremacy, 
Allegiance, and the Test. 

This was perhaps the more desirable, inasmuch as it 
appeared from his testimony that he had been most 
solicitous for news relating to Parliamentary votes of 
money to raise a fleet and an army, and peculiarly inquisi- 
tive regarding naval and ordnance estimates. To gratify 
that curiosity, it appeared that a certain Captain Newman 
finally drew up for him in a little book "a collection of 
the severall estimates from the offices of the navy and 
ordnance," the charges, the members, the rules, the force 
and the state of the coast fortifications, especially of Ports- 
mouth, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight. Whereupon the 
Colonel disappeared for five or six weeks, returning in 
funds and bringing with him a rich wardrobe and some 
sort of a paper "under the French King's own hand." All 
this was in due time set forth in a deposition by Captain 
Newman himself, though his testimony was apparently not 

64 



OF LONG ISLAND 

available until too late to be of much use for the purpose 
for which it was taken. 

Accordingly, Scott was carried to London. There he 
told a curious story, and produced a still more curious 
document. The Earl of Berkshire, he said, having long 
been ill, sent for him in March to advise about a physician. 
One was procured, but it was too late, and the Earl, having 
had Scott brought to him, sent the servants away and 
confided to him that there had been "a foolish and an ill 
design" carried on in England of which he had known 
nothing till Lord Arundel, Mr. Coleman and others had 
told him it could not miscarry, and that he should be 
"looked on as an ill man if he did not come in in time." 
He had heard nothing about killing the King or he would 
have revealed it. Lord Bellasis was an "ill man"; "he 
and others were accustomed to speak ill of the king, indeed 
very irreverently." He refused to tell Scott who the others 
were, made him promise to tell the King, and so contin- 
ued : "My Lord Stafford was all along a moving agent — 
though not very malicious. . . . My Lord Powis his 
covetousness drew him in further than he would have gone. 
— My Lord Peeter . . . was ever averse to all things of 
intrigue in this matter." And so. Lord Cardigan being at 
the door, he dismissed Scott, urging him not to forget this, 
"nor the business at Rohan." This, with some circumlocu- 
tion and much elaboration, was the message Scott brought 
to London. 

It is not easy to discover what, if any, benefits or 
injuries occurred from this curious episode to Scott or 
any one else. The most recent historian of the Popish Plot 
is himself somewhat at a loss to account for it, since, as he 
observes, Scott "ran counter to the testimony of Gates 
as to the designs against the King's life, he never sought 
reward as a professional informer would have done, he gave 

65 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

no evidence against those condemned for the Plot, and his 
name does not appear in the secret-service lists." He con- 
cludes that he must have had some knowledge of Berk- 
shire's correspondence with Coleman from the nobleman 
himself, and that "a scoundrel following in the track of 
Oates and Bedloe would never have concocted such a 
story" — hence it is "probably genuine." Moreover he adds, 
like the worthy member of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society who fifty years earlier contributed to the biography 
of Scott, "Nothing more was known of him." This he 
qualifies a little in a foot-note recording that Scott testified 
before the House of Commons later that Pepys had given 
information to the French court regarding the navy "but 
the affair was never investigated." 

What, then, can be made of this? As it has been 
observed of an earlier episode, all of it is partly true, per- 
haps part of it is all true. Scott had known the Earl of 
Berkshire; the Earl of Berkshire was a Catholic; he had 
had some communication with the Catholic party in Eng- 
land; he was now dead. That much is certain. Oates' 
testimony, now fairly well known, had implicated Lord 
Bellasis, Lord Petre, Lord Arundel of Wardour, the Earl 
of Powis and Viscount Stafford. They were, as a matter 
of fact, then prisoners in the Tower. Coleman had been 
tried and executed for treason, and the five Popish Lords 
impeached. All of this, and much more, was matter of 
common knowledge. Thus far we are willing to go with 
the chronicler of the Plot, or with Scott, or with any man 
who had read or heard of the events of those busy days 
between August, 1678, and April, 1679 — and there must 
have been very few men who had not. But it would hardly 
require any very intimate acquaintance with those circum- 
stances, any power of divination, or any very profound 
ability to draw up such a statement as that which Scott 

66 



OF LONG ISLAND 

brought to the attention of the government, for all of it, 
save Scott's connection with the Earl of Berkshire, had 
ceased to be even news. And while we may admit, with 
Mr. Pollock, that the surprising thing about this informa- 
tion is its moderation, we may not, in view of Scott's 
history, be willing to agree with him that this is any 
necessary proof of its truth or of Scott's importance as a 
witness. 

In any event, every one is agreed that nothing came of 
it. The Long Island real estate dealer was not destined to 
occupy a niche in that temple of fame presided over by 
the pious Dr. Oates — at least for the present. And this 
negative conclusion seems justifiable on the ground of cer- 
tain other testimony not wholly impertinent to the case. 
For a Mrs. Escott, sometime servant to the Earl of Berk- 
shire, testified presently that Scott showed her master a 
map of the places in England which were to be taken by 
the French, that he often entertained the Earl with 
"stories of ye cheats hee has put upon ye world in several 
places," that they both agreed that innocent blood had been 
shed over the Plot, that Scott went to mass and passed as 
a Roman Catholic, that Benson, "a. rogue," also came to 
see the Earl, who a month before he died "was so deaf 
that no stranger spoke to him but as shee went to him and 
hallowed it in his ears." Which testimony, inasmuch as it 
was taken in another matter, may perhaps be not unworthy 
to set beside — or even against — Scott's entertaining narra- 
tive of Berkshire's last hours, and may, perhaps, even 
modify somewhat the importance attached to Scott's 
testimony by Mr. Pollock. 

However that may be, Scott no longer appears as a wit- 
ness to the Plot proper. None the less he was not idle. 
For scarcely had he emerged from this exploit when he 
began to figure in another and scarcely less interesting 

67 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

episode which grew directly out of that frenzy. This was 
the attack made on Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admi- 
ralty, and on Sir Anthony Deane, his colleague, for fur- 
nishing information to the French government concerning 
English naval affairs and, incidentally, for Pepys' alleged 
Catholicism, which, under the Test Act, would have cost 
him his place. Here Scott was cast for a leading part. 

The plot developed clearly and rapidly. On the 27th of 
Oc^tober, 1678, ten days after the discovery of Godfrey's 
body, a certain Captain Charles Atkins laid before Secre- 
tary Henry Coventry information against a friend and 
namesake of his, one Samuel Atkins, clerk to Samuel 
Pepys, which, however vaguely, seemed to point to some 
obscure connection between the accused and Godfrey's 
murder. Three days later he appeared before the Privy 
Council. On November i he swore to his statement before 
a justice of the peace, and Samuel Atkins was promptly 
seized, carried before the committee of inquiry of the 
House of Lords, where, in spite of every inducement to 
give testimony unfavorable to the Duke of York and his 
party, he indignantly denied the whole story. Thence he 
was sent to Newgate. A new informer, Bedloe, was 
pressed into service against him, other witnesses sum- 
moned, and on February 11, 1679, he was brought to trial. 
There the case collapsed. The witnesses were vague and 
unsatisfactory, the prosecution weak, and at the crisis of 
the trial Atkins produced an alibi so strong that the case 
was dismissed, an effort to prove the accused a Roman 
Catholic broke down ignominiously, and he was triumph- 
antly vindicated on every count. 

But the men behind this case, Shaftesbury and Bucking- 
ham at their head, did not rest here. Scarcely had Atkins 
been acquitted on the ground of the alibi, which had been 
prepared by his master, when the attack was directed 

68 



OF LONG ISLAND 

against Pepys himself. It was some time getting under 
way, but once it began it assumed formidable proportions. 
On the 20th of May, 1679, Mr. William Harbord, M.P. 
for Thetford, reported to the House of Commons from 
the Committee of Enquiry into the Miscarriages of the 
Navy "some miscarriages of Sir Anthony Deane and Mr. 
Pepys relating to Piracy &c." These related ostensibly to 
the fitting out of a privateer from government stores six 
years before, securing for her a French commission, and 
employing her against the Dutch, with whom England was 
then at war. But it appeared almost immediately that the 
matter was far deeper than this. For the first witness and 
the first piece of evidence submitted to the committee and 
by them to the House was Colonel Scott and his testimony. 
That gentleman, as always, provided an interesting nar- 
rative. "Having been acquainted with several great men 
belonging to the navy," he began, "by their death he was 
now discharged from privacy, things being settling in Eng- 
land." "M. Pelisary, Treasurer General of the French 
King's navy," he deposed, "had shown him draughts of 
English ship-models, the government of the Admiralty, the 
strength and condition of the English navy, its methods of 
fighting, maps and soundings of the Medway and Kent 
shores, and of the Isle of Wight, plans of Sheerness and 
Tilbury, all signed by Mr. Pepys, who, it appears, received 
for them some £40,000. But," he added, with his wonted 
caution, "there is a mystery in this, more than I dare speak 
of." With that regard for religion and that high sense of 
patriotism which he showed at all times in his career, Scott 
testified that hereupon he had said to Pelissary, who was a 
Protestant, "I hope these rogues that have betrayed their 
country are not of our 'Religion.' " Pelissary answered, 
"They are of the Devil's Religion; let us drink off our 
wine." 

69 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Such evidence, despite its clear and convincing presen- 
tation, it may well be imagined, did not go wholly 
unchallenged. There being some efforts "to take off Scott's 
testimony," Harbord observed that he would like to present 
two other witnesses. The story of one of them at least 
could hardly have afforded him much comfort, since the 
witness merely deposed that five years before he had been 
refused the command of the frigate Jersey by Pepys, and 
further that a short time before he had heard Scott declare 
that Pepys was "a great betrayer of his country and in 
time he would make it appear, and that Pepys was one of 
the Arch-Tray tors of the Kingdom." To this he added 
that he had "heard Pepys commend the Catholics for their 
constancy in Religion" — which last was, save at this time, 
perhaps, no hanging matter. 

With that we come to the real root of the matter. Pass- 
ing by the charge that Pepys had sold his country's secrets 
to France, Harbord pounced on the charge of Papacy. 
"There had been," he said truly enough, "reflections upon 
Pepys formerly as to his Religion, and by collateral proof 
I shall much convince the House that he is not of our 
Religion. I am sorry," he added, "I must say it of a man 
I have lived well withal." That there had been rumors 
of Pepys' Catholicism — as of that of every man in any 
way connected with the Duke of York, who was Lord 
High Admiral — was true enough. What Harbord omitted 
to say that neither on the occasion he mentioned nor on 
any other had there appeared any ground whatever for 
such a charge. 

That ground now appeared in the evidence of John James 
of Glentworth, Lincolnshire, sometime Pepys' butler, now, 
for obvious reasons, not in that service. He deposed that 
there was one Morello who used to say mass at the Queen's 
Chapel, St. James's, Somerset House and Whitehall. He 

70 



OF LONG ISLAND 

had heard this man say that he had studied at Rome. "He 
had Beads and Pictures, and a private door to his room. 
He used to carry a pistol and a dagger and went often into 
St. James's Park, and went to Pepys's house at Chelsea. 
He was frequently shut up with Pepys in his closet singing 
of Psalms often till three o'clock in the morning. He was 
a learned man and would dispute with Pepys in Philosophy. 
When a Proclamation was out for Papists to go out of 
Town, Pepys helped him away with his Papers and Books." 
When James added to this the statement that Pepys had 
said there was no employment in the navy for any man 
save by favor of the Duke the case was complete. 

In brief, it was sought to prove that Morello was a dan- 
gerous man — as must appear to the most casual reader of 
this damning indictment! James' story was true. At any 
other time and under any other circumstances the fact that 
one had as a friend a man who shared his tastes in music 
and learning or even that he sat up until three in the 
morning singing psalms with him, would have been 
laughed out of court as proof that he shared that friend's 
religious views or that he was a danger to the state. That 
men obtained employment in the navy by favor of the 
Lord High Admiral was hardly surprising, much less 
ground for an accusation of either treason or Popery. But 
at this precise moment men were being sent to the block 
on evidence no less flimsy. Sir John Hotham rose promptly 
to add that he had spoken to Oates in the lobby and that 
Oates told him he knew Morello as a Jesuit who had 
"importuned to have charge of the English business." 
Another leader of the Country Party, Garroway, declared 
this was "evidently one of the branches of the Plot." "We 
have a Land-Plot," said he, "this is a Sea-Plot." Sergeant 
Maynard declared this was almost as bad as the charges 
against the Lords in the Tower, and that the papers should 
be put in the Speaker's charge. 

71 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Then Pepys spoke. First he traversed Harbord's whole 
statement. He had, he said, been a member of Harbord's 
committee, he had attended its meetings, and he had never 
heard there any accusation either from Scott or from James. 
He denied that the Admiralty or he himself had ever knowrj , 
about the alleged privateering scheme detailed by Har- .-^^^^ 
bord. "As for the charge of Col. Scott (Lord! Sir.) 
. . . This Gentleman I know not, nor ever saw : I know f'' 
neither his name nor quality, where is his abode or depen- 
dencies," unless he was the man who under the name of 
Godfrey was sought by and escaped the officers not long 
since at Gravesend, Deal and Dover, but in whose London 
lodgings the Lord Mayor found "papers of ill importance 
. , . just such papers as he accuses me of." All charges 
made by Scott Pepys solemnly and categorically denied. 
As to James, he turned him away for being in the house- 
keeper's room at three o'clock Sunday morning. As for 
Morello, he was sent to Pepys by one Hill; he was a good 
scholar and a master of music, harmless and moderate in 
opinions, and he could and would at the desire of the 
House appear to clear himself. Deane followed in the 
same strain. To Scott's charges he replied that he had, 
in fact, built two boats for the French King — to be used 
on the Grand Canal at Versailles in three feet and a half 
of water! He declared, moreover, that a member of the 
House lately in Paris named Scott as one giving intelli- 
gence to the French court. 

Then followed a sharp debate. Sir Joseph Williamson, 
Scott's old friend and patron, although he refrained from 
all mention of Scott, must have had him in mind, for he 
vigorously seconded Deane. Sacheverell, the Country 
Party leader, Garroway, and Harbord pressed the charge. 
Sir Francis Rolle added a touch of Rabelaisian humor. 

72 



OF LONG ISLAND 



Sir William Coventry rose to observe he had had James as 
a butler, that he did not love to do ill offices to one who 
had served him, but that James' service "was not so direct 
as to recommend him to a friend." Coventry's brother 
Henry, then Secretary of State, contributed two interest- 
ing pieces of information. The first was that Scott had 
ab'sconded from London in the preceding October under a 
misapprehension. The government was not looking for 
him at all but for Conyers, a Jesuit, but Scott's flight gave 
ground for suspicion against him. The second was that 
Scott had been employed by the Prince of Conde to survey 
his lands. And to this Harbord added two other bits of 
biography— or romance— that Williamson had told him 
Scott was the ablest man in England, and that he had a 
testimonial from De Witt [who was dead] that he had 
commanded eight regiments of foot for the relief of 
Flanders. He averred further that a great man had told 
him that some had tried to corrupt Scott to bear false 
witness against him, "but Scott detested it." 

The upshot of the matter was that Pepys and Deane 
were committed to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, 
with the understanding that they be examined two days 
later. On that occasion Harbord made another attack on 
them, and they were committed to the Tower. There they 
remained for ten days. On June 2 they were brought 
before the King's Bench, where the Attorney-General 
refused to allow them to be admitted to bail. Somewhat 
later, in spite of the fact that Scott meanwhile swore to 
an information on the lines laid down in his testimony 
before the Commons, the Attorney-General changed his 
mind. The prisoners were permitted to offer security in 
the sum of £30,ooo-a huge amount for those days— and 
so regained their liberty. In the following February they 
were released from that obligation, Scott having refused 



73 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

"^-^ to recognize the truth of his deposition and James having 
confessed that he had concocted his story under Harbord's 
instigation. Nor is it without some small significance in 
this connection that about this time the Duke of Bucking- 
ham recommended to Sir Thomas Leet and Mr. Vaughan 
one J. James, sometime in his service, for the post of store- 
keeper at Woolwich — which casts a certain amount of light 
upon this episode. And so ended the Adventure of the 
House of Commons. 

What induced Scott to bring these charges of treason 
and Popery against Pepys? The answer is not difficult to 
guess. The Popish Plot frenzy was at its height. It 
seemed to Buckingham, Shaftesbury and their Whig sup- 
porters that, with its aid, they might not only be able to 
displace the Tories in the conduct of affairs, but even 
exclude the Duke of York from the succession — with all 
the possibilities that such a victory might entail. But why 
attack Pepys? To this three answers have been given. 
The first is that, ten years belore, Pepys had been commis- ■% 
sioned by the Duke of York to gather evidence in the 
matter of Mrs. Gotherson's appeal to the King for justice 
against Scott, that it was on the strength of this testimony 
that Scott was driven from place and court, and thereafter 

• ^ nourished a grudge against Pepys. The second is the gen- 
eral explanation that Pepys was, in his capacity of Secretary 
of the Admiralty, very close to the Duke, who, until the 
passage of the Test Act, had been Lord High Admiral; 
that a successful attack on Pepys might well involve James, 
and in any event would have a powerful tendency toward 
weakening the Duke's position before Parliament and the 
country. 

The third is the answer which, in later years, was given 
by Scott himself, an answer which is perhaps as good an 
explanation of his own conduct and of the Plot in general 

74 



OF LONG ISLAND 

as can be found anywhere. "Their Design," said he "was 
to destroy the Government and make themselves Kings, 
or rather Tyrants, and for that end did all they could to 
bring an odium and hatred upon his Majesty and Family, 
and by their fictions delude a Giddy and unthinking people. 
Their party was of three sorts. Those that wanted office 
and were disappointed. Those that were enemyes to the 
Government of Church and State, and Fooles that the 
other two brought over to be of their side." 

And to which of these groups did Scott belong? If we 
had not his own confession, it would be easy to guess. 
Despite his manifold protestations it is fairly apparent that 
he was no zealot for either church or state; and hitherto, 
save in a larger sense, he had been a knave rather than a 
fool. In this affair, he admitted, he "acknowledged him- 
selfe a Toole, much used, as well as a Cabinett Counsel- 
lour." "One that had hoped to be [Pepys'] successor in 
the Secretarye's Employment," he declared, "had putt him 
upon contriving [Pepys'] destruction." The design was 
to take Pepys' life, "but the said person found he was not 
likely to succeed in case they had proceeded." And, he 
added, Shaftesbury had made great promises to him to 
further this design. 

The scheme was not unpromising. Pepys was a devoted 
adherent of the Duke of York. Though not himself a 
Catholic, he was no fanatical Protestant, folding a lucra- 
tive office, and being a highly efficient public servant, he 
naturally had enemies. He was thus, under the circum- 
stances, a shining mark. But in all the mistakes of a 
mistaken career, Scott never committed a/ greater error 
than when he joined in the attack on the Secretary of the 
Board of Admiralty. Pepys was what he was because of 
his qualities. He had risen by his abilities, he had main- 
tained himself not so much by favor as by his courage and 

75 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

intelligence. He had not dealt with dishonest contractors, 
surly sailormen, and shifty courtiers, for fifteen years 
without acquiring a fairly thorough acquaintance with the 
world and its wickedness, together with some knowledge 
of how to meet the exigencies of life. Moreover, he had 
an extraordinarily wide acquaintance; and, above all, he 
was, by the accident of fate, set in the precise position, as 
it chanced, to deal with a man like Scott. He had for 
many years been in the closest touch with the navy — and 
he turned at once to his friend. Captain Dyer. He was 
the intimate friend of the Duke of York, who was the 
grantee of New York — and he despatched a letter at once 
to the Duke's appointee, Governor Francis Lovelace, for 
a record of Scott's activities in that quarter of the world. 
He wrote Mrs. Gotherson for information; and to Savile, 
the English ambassador in Paris; and just at this time, by 
chance, Thomas Lovelace turned up in England and agreed 
to testify for Pepys — or at least against Scott. Pepys had 
married the daughter of a French Huguenot refugee — 
and he sent his brother-in-law, Bartholomew St. Michel, 
post-haste to France to secure evidence. Thence after 
nine months he returned, not only with depositions but 
with witnesses. Besides this, Pepys entrusted a Captain 
Gunman with a similar errand in Holland; and employed 
a well-known secret-service agent, Puckle, on the same 
task. He wrote to a score of individuals himself. He put 
into action his intimate knowledge of London; he sent to 
the port towns, where his acquaintance was naturally exten- 
sive; and he enlisted the services of his many and intimate 
friends. As a result, it seemed that every one Scott had ever 
injured — and their name was legion — presented himself by 
letter or in person to contribute to this grand assize. 

The consequence was what might have been foreseen. 
In the Pepys manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in 

76 ^ >J-° 



OF LONG ISLAND 



his own collection, which he presented to his college in 
Canibridge, there are two full volumes of manuscripts, 

fPJy^ marked the Mornamont Papers. Probably nowhere in the 
^^ \ y world is there so complete a record of the activities of a 

i-'" private individual in one place as these manuscripts con- 
tain of the doings of John Scott. Every twist and turn 
of his dishonest career, every piece of villainy, every shift 
and device of his shifty and devious life, every exhibition 
of cowardice, dishonesty, untruthfulness, every scheme he 
entertained, every rebuff he suffered, every disgrace and 
punishment inflicted on him, is there recorded. His 
obscure origin and his poor pretense of gentility, his dis- 
reputable actions in America, his cowardice and court- 
martial in the West Indies, his treachery in England and 
on the continent, his discreditable relations with the 
governments of the Netherlands, France and his own 
country, his thefts, his plots, his private debts and dishon- 
esty, his efforts at bigamy (for he seems to have aspired 
to the hand of Lady Vane!) — everything, from triple 
treason to the evasion of a board bill, is there set down. 
Were it not for the fact that so many of its statements 
are corroborated by independent testimony then unknown 
to Pepys and his informants we might almost doubt its 
accuracy. It is a damning record; and it reveals, more 
clearly than any mere statement can express, one great 
outstanding fact. There was no man in the British 
Empire, no man in the whole world probably that Scott 
would not have done better to let alone than Samuel Pepys. 
Reading its manifold testimony to the utter worthlessness 
and untrustworthiness of the man, one is inclined to the 
belief that of the three categories into which Scott himself 
divided those who entered into the machinations of the 
Popish Plot, he belonged to the third, he was not only a 
knave, he was a colossal fool. 

77 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

And whatever else the Popish Plot accomplished, what- 
ever effect it had upon the Duke of York and Pepys, 
however it affected the course of English history, it did 
one other thing. It made an end of John Scott. It is 
commonly said that the matter was "allowed to drop." 
As a matter of fact, Scott went into hiding, and probably 
left England for a time. For Samuel Pepys was not a 
man to let such an attempt upon his life go wholly 
unnoticed, once he was clear of the preposterous charges 
brought against him; nor were the men of the court party 
likely to err on the side of leniency. For the moment, 
indeed, they did nothing against those who had engineered 
this tremendous attempt to alter the course of the English 
government. The Whigs were still too strong. But when 
Shaftesbury's last coup had failed; when the eloquence of 
Halifax had defeated the Exclusion Bill; when another 
election had put the House of Commons in the hands of 
the King and the Whig leader had sought refuge in Hol- 
land, they struck. A stringent Test Act was passed 
against the Presbyterians; the' Scotch Covenanters, who 
had risen in revolt, were cruelly suppressed; and the Duke 
of Argyle tried and condemned for treason, saved his life 
only by flight. The Duke of York was despatched to 
Scotland to stamp out the remaining embers of opposition, 
and the King's natural son, the Duke of Monmouth, found 
his triumphal progress in the north cut short by imprison- 
ment. The Duke of Buckingham retired from public life, 
.and the Whig cause descended from politics to conspiracy. 

And, at this precise moment, the Lord delivered Scott 
into the hands of his enemies. With the fall of his for- 
tunes, he had begun to drown his sorrows more and more 
in drink. He had always been quarrelsome, he now became 
what he seems never to have been before either to soldiers 
or servants — dangerous. One evening, being farther gone 

78 



OF LONG ISLAND 

than usual, he killed a hackney-coachman named Butler, for 
refusing to carry him home to his lodgings from the public- 
house where he had been spending the evening. The 
occasion was too good to be lost. He was arrested. Imme- 
diately two powerful influences joined issue over him. On 
the one side Pepys promptly bestirred himself. He wrote 
to his clerk and friend Hewer, concerning Scott, "whome 
God is pleased to take out of our hands into his own for 
justice. For should he prevail with the widdow for for- 
giveness (which in some respects I could wish might be 
prevented) there is the King's pardon behind, which I am 
confident he is able to make relating to the state as well as 
us, that it might well enough atone for this his last vilany. 
Nor do I doubt but to save his owne life he will forget his 
trade and tell the truth, tho' to the hazard of the best 
Friends he has, which pray let Sir Anthony Deane think 
of, and of putting in a caveat against his getting any 
pardon from the court (if he should attempt it) till we 
are first heard." 

Pepys was right. Scott escaped, leaving this time even 
his famous charts and papers behind him. These were 
promptly appropriated by Pepys and added to the collec- 
tion already secured by the Lord Mayor on the occasion of 
Scott's earlier flight. Together they formed a notable 
body of literary and cartographical remains. Included 
among them were accounts of proceedings in Parliament, 
lists of ships, much miscellaneous information relating to 
the army and navy, notes on alchemy, even some poetry. 
There was the unique copy of the Help to the Indians, 
which by this almost miraculous chance was thus preserved 
to puzzle bibliographers and blacken Scott's reputation 
among them. There was the beginning of his history and 
description of America; and it is probable that through 
Pepys these came into the hands of his friend Sir Hans 

79 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Sloane and so ultimately into the British Museum collec- 
tions, where they still remain. 

Scott himself took refuge in Norway, supported, it 
was declared, by those who feared his return to England. 
There he was seen in the summer of 1683 by a certain 
Captain Gelson, who promptly wrote of his meeting to 
Pepys, and of his account of the Popish Plot which we 
have read. It is small wonder that Pepys consulted with 
Deane as to how they might bring him back and so manage 
affairs that, to save his own skin, he would tell what he 
knew and so ruin "the other party, notably Herbert and 
other rogues." That purpose they were not able to accom- 
plish. He remained safely on the continent, pensioned, it 
was supposed, by these same "rogues" for many years. 
He did not even dare to return in 1688, when the Glorious 
Revolution brightened the lives of so many patriots. Not 
until 1695 did he show his face in England again, and even 
then he promptly met with arrest and imprisonment in 
Newgate for coming from France without leave. But he 
was now a harmless, broken man, against whom even 
Pepys was not willing to move. Moreover, his friends 
were now in power. His old sponsor, Harbord, had been 
made a privy councillor after the Revolution, vice-treas- 
urer for Ireland and finally ambassador to Turkey. He 
was now dead, but there were enough men left of the party 
which Scott had served to heed his appeal, backed, no doubt, 
by his threats. In the summer of 1696 he was pardoned 
and, in the words of another of his biographers, we are 
again informed, "we hear no more of him." This, as it 
was to prove, was very far indeed from the fact, but at 
any rate he seems to have passed shortly thereafter from 
the scene of his earthly activities. And so, for the third 
time, it would appear that was the end of John Scott. 

Finally, what of the family whom he deserted? Con- 

80 



OF LONG ISLAND 

cerning them there are many references. His wife, as we 
have seen, was given certain of his possessions to keep her 
from starving after his flight. Not to enquire too closely 
into her character and career, she ultimately married a 
resident of Southampton. There were two sons, the elder 
John, and a younger who rejoiced in the name of Jecko- 
miah. The former, about the time of the Popish Plot, 
came to England, like Japhet, in search of his father, whom, 
however, he did not find. It is probably to him that this 
edifying letter was addressed. The younger became, in 
turn, a "Captain," and his somewhat extravagant conduct 
still forms a picturesque page in the annals of Southampton. 

"London, May the 6th, 1681. 
My Deare Child, 

I have sent to thy Brother a hatt, a Suite of Cloaths, a 
pair of stockings, some Gloves, Cravats, Paper, a grammar, 
to send to you by Capt. Bound in a portmantle, and have 
writ to Capt. Howell to take you Into his famely. I charge 
you yield to him exact Obedience and be verry Dilligent in 
wrighting and such other Rudiments as your Skoolmastor 
is capable of Instructing you in, and lett me find by a letter 
by Capt. Bound what Profisiency you make in Wrighting 
and Casting accompts. Mr. Laughton is very able to 
Instruct you, and I am sure will do Itt to the utmost. If 
you give me Incuragement I shall be very kind to you and 
take great care for your Preferment, and shall send for 
you as sone as your Brother has made one voige to gett 
the Practicall Part of Navigation, that at his Returne to 
Southampton he may be able to give such account of him- 
selfe that Render him usefull and acceptable to his friends, 
and if God preserve him, come master and merchant, of 
a shipp and cargo, but I Designe you for annother sort of 
Life, thearefore do not through want of an Industrious 
address Injure your selfe by Destroying my hoapes and 

81 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

Expectations, and had your Brother com over when I sent 
for him he would have learned that which I find he is now 
uncapable of in a great measure, and might have bin back 
againe before this time, and soe has in effect lost to or 
three years which I hope he will with great Industrey 
Retrieve. I have sent you a hod and Skarfe, and three 
Paire of Gloves, for you to make a present on to your 
mother to shew your Dutifull Respect to her, for what 
ever Differance, she and I have had Remember shee is 
your mother, and you ow her a Dutty of the Greatest 
tendernes. I charge you keep close to your Book; the first 
good accompt you give me I will send you anything that 
you signifie to me you have occation for, by a Letter firmly 
wrighte by yourself e as sone as you can. Capt. Howell 
must be an evidence for you, as also of your sivell Gentle 
behavior, I trust God in his mersey will dispose you to 
have an Ey to his service and not to think It labour lost, 
for it is the Interest of Every Private Parson to make a 
search Into ye Nature and Quallity of the Relligion by 
which aloane he can hoape to be Etternally happy. Present 
my humble service to Capt. Howell and Give him this 
Incloased Paper, my service to your unckle Joseph and all 
my friends, wright upon Mr. John Topping and present 
my service to him and Pray his Excuse for not wrighting 
att this time, I shall sudenly God willing Doe him the 
trouble of a Letter, I am your very Affectionate 
Loveing feather 

John Scott." 

Such is the story of the life of this extraordinary char- 
acter during those years when he played an active part in 
the affairs of this world for good or ill. It may be there 
was something good in it. I have not been able to find it, 
for though he lived long and touched many sides of life 

82 



OF LONG ISLAND 

it seemed always to be the wrong side. Yet to it, as to so 
many other tales, there is an epilogue. From the days 
when he first met the Gothersons and conceived the idea 
of linking his obscure and anonymous origin to that of a 
family of place and consequence in the world as he knew 
it, to his last endeavors, he never lost sight of this self- 
imposed gentility. He continually described himself as 
John Scott of Scot's Hall in Kent, in the face of all the 
facts, and of the bitter opposition of that family which 
sought every means to disavow the relationship. He 
invented a name for his imaginary English domains, Mor- 
namont, and it was under the sarcastic title of the 
Mornamont Papers that Pepys bound up the collections he 
made of Scott's activities when he was defending himself 
against Scott's charges. He took the trouble to have a new 
and garbled page inserted into a history of Kent to bolster 
up his claim. But it was never allowed — until it was too 
late. Among the little ironies of his ironical history it is 
worthy of note that when Scott was at last pardoned by 
the government of William HI at the solicitation of those 
who had used him for their purposes, he finally achieved 
his ambition. For that paper describes him as John Scott, 
late of Scot's Hall in the county of Kent, Gentleman. Of 
all his pretensions, this alone was left to him. Almost at 
once he died; and if he departed not wholly in the odor of 'v-^ 
sanctity, he bore with him at least a distinct aroma of 
gentility to comfort him in his last moments. 

Nor is this all, or even the most entertaining part of the 
epilogue. Much the most important chapter remains — the 
chapter which relates the adventures of his posthumous 
reputation. If, from whatever limbo he entered on his 
departure from this world, he could have beheld the for- 
tunes of his memory, he would have been filled with 
exceedingly mixed emotions. For two hundred years his 

83 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

name occurs nowhere without some reference to his dubious 
character and his undoubted rascalities in America, in the 
West Indies, and in those European countries which wit- 
nessed or suffered from his activities. As late as 1882 a 
certain G. D, Scull issued an account of what he calls "the 
troubled life" of Dorothea Gotherson, for circulation 
among her descendants in America, and this in the follow- 
ing year he expanded into a volume, which included her 
writings. That volume contains a full if not very accurate 
account of John Scott and his practices toward the Gother- 
sons — so long does the smart of a land-swindle endure. 
Some fifteen years later Scott was included in the Diction- 
ary of National Biography, purely, it would seem from 
reading its brief and somewhat inaccurate narrative of his 
life, on account of his various villainies, and perhaps as a 
horrible example. So far he had fared as badly at the 
hands of the historical muse as he had at the hands of his 
outraged contemporaries. But his revenge was ultimate 
and complete. For as he finally made good his claims to 
the recognition of his gentility by his government, so he 
seems finally to have vindicated his veracity before the bar 
of history in a manner so surprising and unexpected as to 
deserve more than a passing mention. 

It will be remembered that in the month of April, 1895, 
the Venezuelan authorities brought to a head the long- 
standing dispute over the boundary between British Guiana 
and Venezuela by the arrest of two members of the British 
Guiana police for trespassing upon Venezuelan territory. 
The men were released and made their report to their gov- 
ernment; and Venezuela at once appealed to the United 
States for aid in the controversy which they foresaw would 
ensue with the British authorities. President Cleveland 
was persuaded, by an appeal to the principles of the Monroe 
Doctrine, to take up the case, and in December of that year 

84 



OF LONG ISLAND 

sent to Congress his famous message declaring that any 
attempt by Great Britain to enforce her claims upon Ven- 
ezuela without resort to arbitration would be regarded by 
the United States as just cause for war. Congress sup- 
ported the attitude of the President, and, in pursuance of 
the determination of both sides, commissions were promptly 
appointed by Great Britain and the United States to inves- 
tigate the whole question. Each commission engaged the 
assistance of expert lawyers and historians; the United 
States employing on that work the talents of Professor 
George L. Burr, of Cornell University, and Professor J. 
Franklin Jameson, then of Brown University, the editor 
of the American Historical Review and more recently 
director of the historical division of the Carnegie Institu- 
tion. The English government appointed a similar body, 
under the direction of Sir Frederick Pollock; and each side 
set to work to prove its case. The earliest settlements of 
the Dutch upon the Essequibo and the adjacent lands were 
investigated, the earliest maps collected and compared, and 
an amount of light shed upon the beginnings of European 
occupation in that quarter of the world which was of the 
utmost value and interest to historians. 

And, conspicuous among the witnesses thus summoned to 
the bar of history was Colonel John Scott! For it will be 
remembered that he not only wrote the beginnings of a 
projected Discription of America, but a Relation of his 
own valiant achievements and adventures in precisely that 
obscure corner of the world now suddenly made the test of 
good faith and friendship between the two great Anglo- 
Saxon nations which had earlier had the privilege of sharing 
the blessings of Scott's residence among them. 

His testimony did not, indeed, finally determine the 
question at issue, though he was a material witness. But 
the result was curious in the extreme so far as Scott's for- 

85 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

tunes were concerned. Each side found in his statements 
some confirmation of its contention. The Americans — 
and it may be noted that he was not so favorable to their 
views — were somewhat prone to rake up the old colonial 
scores against him. The English, despite the account in 
the Dictionary of National Biography, were rather more 
inclined to admit his testimony without troubling much 
about searching the records for evidence of his character. 
Each side seems to have more or less tacitly assumed that 
whatever his deeds or misdeeds elsewhere, his account of 
what he saw in the West Indies was, on the whole, tolerably 
credible. And though the Dutch historian Netscher was 
rather inclined to doubt Scott's geography as well as his 
history, his views were not seriously entertained by either 
the American or the English investigators in whose hands 
rested the preparation of evidence in the Venezuelan case. 
In consequence, Scott cuts a better figure before this court 
than before any of the numerous tribunals which summoned 
him as defendant or witness during his lifetime. 

More was to follow. Some six years after the Venezue- 
lan controversy, a relative of Sir Frederick Pollock's, John 
Pollock, published the most elaborate account of the Popish 
Plot which has yet appeared, a work marked, on the whole, 
by admirable spirit, much knowledge, and remarkable 
ingenuity. In that narrative Scott plays, if not a leading, at 
least a conspicuous part in building up the argument to 
which Mr. Pollock addresses himself. He does not, indeed, 
commit himself irrevocably to the contention that the 
Colonel was an unimpeachable witness. But, as we have 
seen, he lays great stress on the fact that Scott did have 
genuine knowledge of the Earl of Berkshire's correspond- 
ence, that "the simplicity and directness of his relation 
points to its substantial truth"; and that the moderation of 
his narrative is a further proof of its genuineness. He 



OF LONG ISLAND 

goes farther still. No one looking for the rewards of a 
professional informer, he says, would have acted as did 
Colonel Scott; no scoundrel following on the track of Oates 
and Bedloe would ever have concocted such a story; and, 
in brief, "His information may be accepted as genuine." 
Here, then, we have a clean bill of health. To Pollock, as 
to those who drew up the English side of the Venezuelan 
case, there was no Scull, no Mornamont Papers, not even 
a Dictionary of National Biography. 

Nor is this all the tale of his long-belated vindication. 
Some years after the Venezuelan controversy was deter- 
mined, an English historical scholar, the Rev. George 
Edmundson, than whom there is probably no better author- 
ity in his particular field, contributed an article to the 
English Historical Review entitled "The Dutch in Western 
Guiana." In the forefront of his contribution he sets out 
that the American scholars who gathered the evidence in 
the Venezuelan case had endeavored, not without a consid- 
erable measure of success, to throw discredit on Scott's 
testimony in its bearing upon the history of Dutch coloniza- 
tion in Western Guiana. He continues: "A careful 
examination of all available evidence has led me to form 
an entirely different opinion upon the trustworthiness of 
Scott." For he declares, "The credibility of a writer relat- 
ing otherwise unknown historical facts depends upon (i) 
his nearness to the events narrated, (2) his personal access 
to sure sources of information, (3) his motives in writing, 
(4) his proved accuracy in cases where his statements can 
be verified." All these tests, he concludes, are "absolutely 
satisfactory in the instance of Major Scott." He was in 
fact the commander of the English expedition of 1665-6; 
and, as Mr. Edmundson says, "he tells us in his preface 
that he had always been a great lover of geography and 
history, and that from an early age he had purposed to 

87 



COLONEL JOHN SCOTT 

write a large description of all America, also that he had 
personally been upon no less than one hundred and twenty- 
six islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and had travelled 
over (among other places) a great part of Guiana." 
Whereupon Mr. Edmundson quotes Scott's description of 
his Herodotean method of research and concludes : "It is 
•clear then in the narrative given by Scott of the early 
history of the Dutch colonies in Western Guiana that we 
are dealing with the narrative of a contemporary, familiar 
with the localities about which he was writing, conversant 
with all the literature upon the subject, including documents 
and journals in manuscript, and having exceptional oppor- 
tunities for personal commune with men intimately 
acquainted for a long period with the country and its his- 
tory. It is further important to note that the work, which 
was never published, and of which only a fragment was 
committed to paper, was a long-cherished design, the prepa- 
ration for which was scientifically thorough, and carried on 
for years; and that it is impossible to attribute to the 
writer any motives of political partisanship, or any other 
.aim than that put forth by himself 'of giving new accounts 
from observations of my owne.' More than this, his claim 
is fully borne out by the accuracy which is shown by him 
in those parts of the narrative which can be historically 
verified." 

Thus history, like time, whose chronicler it is, brings its 
revenges. At the hands of this learned and reverend gen- 
tleman Scott has finally come into his own, even though it 
has taken more than two centuries for him to find any one 
to believe him so whole-heartedly. Perhaps Edmundson is 
right, perhaps Scott did tell the truth — "some truth but not 
all gospel" is what Willoughby wrote of him, and that 
judgment still holds after two centuries, despite the Pol- 
locks and Mr. Edmundson. It is impossible not to feel a 

88 



OF LONG ISLAND 

certain regret that such talents as he unquestionably pos- 
sessed should not have somehow worked to better ends. 
Had he only succeeded somewhere, had he secured the grant 1^ 
of Long Island, had he been able to retain his post of ""^^^Tcri^^ 
geographer-royal — but the conjectures are futile. He broke 
on the rock of the Gothejson affair, and that not only l^u 
deprived him of the sympathy of his own generation, and 
of its successors, it revealed qualities which would at almost 
any time have made his permanent success impossible. 

None the less he is a considerable figure. That he should 
have done so much to determine the fate of Long Island 
and New York, that he should have contributed to the set- 
tlement of the boundary between New York and New Jersey 
while he was alive is remarkable enough. But that two 
centuries after his death he should take such an active part 
in the adjustment of the boundary between Venezuela and 
British Guiana and cut such a respectable figure in the his- 
tory of the two nations with which his life was so intimately 
and so scandalously bound up, passes the bounds of what we 
usually regard as probability. What his tongue could not 
accomplish for him while he was alive, his pen did for him 
among posterity; and if he failed in all else it ensured for 
him a safe corner in a great controversy, from whose rec- 
ords he may henceforth look out with some of his old con- 
fidence upon a world which, with all his wit, he failed to 
quite deceive while he was still a part of it. Viewing all 
this, it again becomes apparent why so many men appeal 
from the harsh judgments of their contemporaries to the 
serene tribunal of history. 






89 



NOTES 

Page 2, line 32 : The principal accounts of Scott hitherto are those in 
the Dictionary of National Biography, in the Proceedings of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, and in Filling's Bibliography of the Algon- 
quiari Languages — the two latter quoted more particularly below; 
together with the long notices in G. D. Scull, Dorothea Gotherson, more 
fully noted later. 

Page 4, line 17 : Mass. E«cords, II, 45, 89, 92. Hutchinson Collec- 
tions, Prince Soc. 1865, 380. 

Page 4, line 33: Scull, 54. Eawl. MSS., 175 ff., 101, 107. 

Page 5, line 4: The name is spelled variously Scottshall, Scotshall, 
Scot's Hall and Scott's Hall. I have used the last for convenience. As 
this seat of the Scott family was within a few miles of Ashford, it is 
of course, by no means impossible that John Scott did belong to some 
of its collateral and obscurer branches; but it seems certain from the 
repudiation of the relationship by the family that the relationship, if 
it existed at all, was neither close nor desired. Op. Camden Britannia 
ed. Gough, 1806 ed., on the estate and family, and further reference to 
the family, and notes. 

Page 5, line 7: Eawl. MSS., A, 175 f., 90, 170-2, 182, 188, 1-26, 188, 
182. 

Page 5, line 13: Southampton Town Eecords, I, 175. O. P. Allen, 
Scott Genealogy, p. 10. 

Page 8, Line 30: Howell, Hist. Southampton, and J. T. Adams, Hist. 
Southampton (this latter an admirable account). Brodhead, Docts. rel. 
to Col. Hist. N. Y., ed. by O'Callaghan and Fernow, also Hist. N. ¥., 
1, 670. Pilling, 398. Conn. Hist. Coll., II, 8. Thompson, Hist. Long 
Island, I, 481, etc. 

Page 9, line 16: New Haven Eec, II, 89, 92. 

Page 9, line 31: Southampton Town Eec, I, 117-175 passim. Scull, 
Dorothea Gotherson, 30-1 n., 54 ff. Surrogate Eec, N. Y., Mar. 1657, 
quoted in A. S. Cook, Will of Ellis Coolc. 

Page 9, line 33: Conn. Hist. Soc Coll., Ill, 8. 

Page 10, line 14: Scull, 55. Pilling, Bibliography of the Algonquian 
Languages, 398, hereafter quoted as "Pilling." Owing to the circum- 
stance that this volume was almost miraculously preserved, a biography 
of Scott by that eminent bibliographer and historical scholar, Mr. Wilber- 
force Eames, was included in this work. It is an excellent account, as , 

far as it goes, and although I havei checked up aU its sources, I have No ' 
quoted it for convenience where that procedure saves space. 

Page 11, line 27: Conn. Hist. Coll., Ill, 8. PiUing, 398. 

Page 15, line 17: Not Thomas as stated in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 
1862-3, p. 67. See also Scull, p. 55. 

Page 15, line 28: C. S. P. Dom., 1662, passim; Palfrey, I., 569 n. 
Scull, 9; PiUing, 398; Arnold, Hist. B. I., I, 583; Palfrey, I, 565 n. 

91 



NOTES 

Page 16, line 21: Mass, Hist. Soe. Proc, 1862-3, 41-77; Calendar 
State Papers, Colonial, quoted as C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, Mar. 2, 1663, 
p. 125. 

Page 18, line 20: For the Gotherson episode see Scull, passim, esp. 
pp. 57-8; Eawl. MSS., 175 ff., 112, 119-123, 125-6, 128-9, 131-40, 144, 
147. 

Page 20, line 7: See above Hist. Narragansett Patent references, 
esp. Pilling, 398; and C. S. P. Col. 1661-8, p. 125; Arnold, I, 383; Pal- 
frey, I, 565 n. Conn. Hist. Soe. Coll., Ill, 8; Van Eensselaer, Hist. 
N. Y., in 17tli cent., I, 500 ff. 

Page 21, line 6: C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 143; Palfrey, Hist. New Eng., 
I, 564. 

Page 21, line 31: Palfrey, I, 565, 566 n.; Pilling, 398; Brodhead, I, 
725; Hutch, Coll., 380. 

Page 22, line 9: C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 147; Docts. rel. to Hist. 
N. Y., Ill, 46 ; Palfrey, 565 n. 

Page 23, line 16: Rawl. MSS. A, 175, ff. 110, 116. 

Page 24, line 14: Scull, 55 ff.; Brodhead, I, 726; Palfrey, I, 554, 

566 71.; N. H. Eec, II, 510; Pilling, 398. 

Page 25, line 12: Southampton Town Eecords, II, 37; Brodhead, I, 
726; Pilling, 398; C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, 173. 

Page 25, line 28: Brodhead, I, 726; Pilling, 398; N. H. Eec, II, 515, 
541; Doct. Col. Hist. N. Y., II, 393, 399-40. 

Page 27, line 2: Cp. ref. to page 9, Line 33; page 23, line 16, etc. 
See also O'Callaghan, Hist. New Neth., Brodhead and Pilling to the 
same effect, and C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, pp. 147, 173; Palfrey, I, 566 n.; 
N. H. Eec, II, 515, 541; Docts. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., II, 393, 399-407; 
Brodhead, I, 727. 

Page 28, line 8 : Pilling, Brodhead, I, 733-5, &c., as above. See also 
N. H. Eec, II, 539-540; Mass. Archives, II, 183; Palfrey, I, 566 ?i., 
567. Hutch. Coll., 384; Pub. Eec Comm., I, 418. O'Callaghan, Hist. 
New Neth., II, 512. 

Page 29, line 17: Mass. Arch., II, 183, 184, 357; N. H. Eec, II, 539- 
540; Palfrey, I, 566 n., 568 n., 567; Hutch. Coll., 384. Palfrey, I, 

567 n. Brodhead, I, 733; PiUing, 398; Doc. rel. Hist. N. Y., Ill, 400. 

Page 30, line 11: Cp. above and Palfrey, I, 568 n.; Comm. Eec, I, 
436. 

Page 30, line 14: Comm. Eec, I, 436; Palfrey, 568 n.; Pilling, 398. 

Page 31, line 2: Van Eensselaer, I, 525 ff.; C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, 
p. 225; Pilling, 398. 

Page 31, line 13 : Pub. Eec Comm., I, 436, 441 ; II, 16, 36, 50. 

Page 34, line 9: Doc. Hist. N. Y., Ill, 86; Brodhead, Van Eensselaer, 
Pilling, etc Pub. Eec Conn., II, 16; C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, I, 273, 415, 
441; II, 36, 50. 

Page 34, line 24: C. S. P. Dom., 1665, p. 148; C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, 
p. 607. Eawl. MSS. A, 175, 75 ff. 

Page 35, line 3 : Cp. ref. to 29 and C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 415. Eawl. 
MSS., 175 ff., 75 b. Scull, 59. Pilling, 398. 

Page 35, line 34: Cp. Van Eensselaer, Hist. N. Y. in 17th Century. 

Page 36, line 21: C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 337. 

92 



NOTES 

Page 38, line 11: See Scull, and Bawl, MSS. as above passim, esp, 
pp. 9-11 from Pepys' papers. 

Page 38, line 23: C S. P. Col., 1661-8, pp. 456, 529. 
Page 39, line 19: C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 529, 478, 480, 483. 
Page 41, line 5: Scott's Relation, quoted U. S. Boundary Comm. 
Rep'ts. C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 480, 483. C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 482. 
Page 42, line 4: Rawl. MSS., A, 175 ff., 149-56. 
Page 43, line 30: C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 189, 493. 
Page 44, line 3 : Col. Treas. Bks., 1667-8, p. 386. l 
Page 44, line 8: Col. Treas. Bks., p. 386, 597. Eawl. MSS., A, 175 f.,- 

lOo. 

Page 42, line 23 : C. S. P. Col., 1661-8, p. 478, 499, 539. 
Page 47, line 13: Eawl. MSS., A, 175, ff. 372. Also quoted in U. S.^ 
Comm. Venezuela Boundary, Vol. I, p. 173 n. 
Page 48, line 29: Scull, 12-15. 

Page 49, line 22: Scull, 12-15, from Mornamont Papers, Eawl. MSS., 
A, 175 f., 372 ff. V , , 

Page 50, line 5: C. S. P. Dom., 1667-8, p. 493. 

Page 50, line 11: Eawl. MSS., A, 175, f., 1-29, 53-54 b., 315, 335, 

o^Oy oOly out , 

Page 53, line 8: Eawl. MSS., A, 173, 175 passim, many references, 
319, etc., 331, 359 b, 360, esp. f. 29; Scull, do. from same source; 
Wheatley, Pepys' Diary, Introd., XXXV. 

Page 55, line 8: Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 35-356; Scull (from Morna- 
mont papers). Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 262 ff. 

Page 55, line 20: Eawl. MSS., A, 175 f., 66. 

Page 55, line 26: Eawl. MSS., A, 175 f., 179; Scull, 63; Eawl., A, 
188 f., 262 ff. 

Page 56, line 14: Eawl. MSS., A, 175, 195, 195, 367; do. 190 f., 117. 
Page 56, line 21: Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 168-172 b, 185, 268, 270^ 

^i Li IT, 

Page 57, line 2: Rawl. MSS., A, 175 f., 190. 

Page 57, line 11: Eawl. MSS., A, 175 f., 163-4 b, 173; ScuU, 30 (Mrs. 
Gotherson to Pepys). 

Page 61, line 6: Scull, 61. 

Page 61, line 19: Scull, 62; H. M. C. Eepts., I, 21; IV, 245 f. 

Page 61, line 29: Aff. Etrang., cxxxi f., 183, quoted in Burghclere, 
Buckingham, p. 353. 

Page 63, line 8: Rawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 114 ff. 

Page 63, line 13 : Eawl. MSS., A, 173 f., 200. 

Page 63, line 28: Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 129-129 b; do. 175, 163-4 b, 
114 ff. 

Page 64, line 8 : Rawl. MSS., A, 188 f ., 127. Cp. also Pollock, Popish 
Plot, 61, and notes, Scull, 65, Coventry Papers, xi, 396. 

Page 65, line 27: PoUock, Popish Plot, 61-64, 69 n. App. B, infor- 
mation quoted. 

Page 67, line 14: Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 272 ff. 

93 



NOTES 

Page 68, line 30: Cp. Pollock, Popish Plot, passim, 106 f£.; Wheat- 
ley, Pepys' Diary, xxxii ff. ; Janner, Pepys and the Popish Plot, Eng. 
Hist. Eev., Apr., 18&2; Scull, 16, 17. 

Page 69, line 7: Grey's Debates, VII, 303 ff. 

Page 73, line 30: Eawl. MSS., A, 188 f., 32-35 f. 

Page 74, line 3 : Wheatley, Pepys ' Diary, xxxiv. For a better account 
see the original editioin of the Diary by Smith. See also Mercurius 
Anglicus, 17 Mar., 1679-80, where James publicly acknowledges the 
falsity of his evidence. 

Page 74, line 8 : Rawl, MSS., A, 175 f ., 336. 

Page 74, line 24: Scull, 16, 17. 

Page 75, line 21 : Rawl. MSS., A, 190 f ., 56 ff. 

Page 76, line 33: Eawl., 175, 177; SeuU, 205-6. ScuU, 20, 25. Eawl. 
MSS., A, 188 flf., 278, 313, 46-53, 194, 56, 7. 

Page 77, line 12: Not content with claiming connection with the 
Scotts of Scott 's Hall in Kent, he seems at times to have hinted at 
his kinship with the greater Scott family, the dukes of Buecleugh, whose 
heiress, Anne Scott, married Charles IPs son, the Duke of Monmouth. 

Page 77, line 34: These papers are preserved in part in the Eawl. 
MSS. collection in. the Bodleian Library, Oxford, from which these notes 
are chiefly derived; in part among the Pepys papers in Magdalen Col- 
lege, Cambridge; in part in the British Museum. Some are calendared 
in Andrews' Bibliography of documents relating to colonial history in 
British archives. Some are calendared in Col. State Papers, Dom. and 
Col. 

The best example of Pepys' questionnaires is his letter to S. Pett, 
Jan. 17, 1679-80, quoted with answer (from Mrs. Gotherson) in Scull, 
25. This seems to set at rest any question that this was the same man, 
which has sometimes been questioned, even were there not a mass of 
similar corroborative evidence to this effect. See also Eawl. MSS., A, 
188 f., 262. 

Scull, 17. Eawl., A, 175 f., 92-3, 157, 193, 81. 

Mornamont Papers [Eawl. MSS., A, 173, 175, 188, etc.]. See also 
Burghclere, Buckingham, for letter to Louis XLV carried by Scott, Nov., 
1678 (from Aff. Strang., cxxxi f., 193), which goes far to confirm this. 

Page 78, line 7: Scull, 22. Milborne's testimony. Eawl., A, 175, 683. 

Page 79, line 3: Rawl. MSS., A, 178 f., 145 ff. Intelligencer, 20 May, 
1681, do. 23 May. Eawl. MSS., A, 178 f., 164, inquest on Butler. Rawl. 
MSS., A, 178 f., 178, 238, 238 b, 260, as to murder; Scull, 65-6. 

Page 80, line 6 : Rawl. MSS., A, 190 f ., 56 ff. 

Page 80, line 12 : C. S. P. Dom., 1694-5, p. 487, June, 1695. 

Page 83, line 17: Rawl. MSS., 175 f., 43. 

Page 85, line 31: See U. S. Comm. Venezuela Boundary Eepts., 1896-7; 
English Blue Bks., same subject and date and Suppl. Rept., U. S. C. 

Page 86, line 25: Pollock, as above. 



JUL 



